> They've been "elite" tech people since before they were in the job force.
By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them.
I don't work in the Bay Area, I work in Phoenix. I imagine it's a different world out there: instead of saving 90% of my income and living in a van, I own a home and save 75%. Instead of talking to people who work at Apple and went to MIT, I talk to people who were self-taught, or attended some other institution I'm not familiar with.
Even the people that I do know who went off to work at Amazon, Apple, or Google aren't even that great of engineers. In fact, they're probably worse engineers than the ones I know at Fortune 500s which aren't even tech companies.
I've seen people who had 25+ years of experience lose a job position to someone who didn't know what `setInterval` was.
To me, an "elite" tech person would be someone who wrote software that people actually cared about and had a strong amount of domain knowledge in a particular area, or prototyped hardware and sold a product that people bought. Even then, these people are flawed just like everyone else. Not too long ago, the author of Redis posted an article about shortcomings of Lua here on HN, and a deep inspection of his post simply yielded the finding that he wrote a Lua binding with a glaring exploit in it, and his entire article revolved around trying to justify his own flaws.
To me having parents that have money doesn't make you elite; it's just something to think is rather nice and want to work toward as well.
It seems to me that there exists a demographic of people in tech that seem impressive to others, but haven't actually contributed anything significant or tangible to the industry. They probably exist in senior positions of companies that I've never heard of that serve a niche that I'm not a part of. I don't know, but they aren't "elite" to me.
Kids, do and make things people care about. School doesn't matter at all. Learning matters. Spending a small fortune to maybe associate with people who will get you a job is trying to play the lottery, but with a far more expensive ticket.
When you're denied a job at a startup after receiving multiple degrees ask yourself if it was worth it. It takes 30 minutes to invalidate 4-8 years of your hard work. People want people who can do the job.
>By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them.
That life looks like living in Seattle or the Bay or New York, making somewhere between $180-$230k a year first year out of undergrad, being able to travel for concerts and live in luxe Airbnbs with your similarly elite and pedigreed friends.
>Even the people that I do know who went off to work at Amazon, Apple, or Google aren't even that great of engineers. In fact, they're probably worse engineers than the ones I know at Fortune 500s which aren't even tech companies.
I think this is a reasonable viewpoint if you believe society (or even people) cares about how skilled you are in your craft. Unfortunately, society doesn't, and rather only cares about how much you make.
As such, society will always consider a jet-setting Facebook or Google new grad making $250k her first year because of a signing bonus or negotiation skills superior to someone who graduated from ASU working at Amazon/Cisco/HP/etc companies making $150k or god forbid, even less. There's a lifestyle difference that I'll never be able to match.
Thanks for sharing. Still curious how sustainable the lifestyle is if you're married, or if it's possible at all. Any thoughts? The folks in Phoenix out here can't make that type of money unless they're a Principle Software Engineer/Architect/VP or higher if they can manage to negotiate it otherwise it's reserved to management. Anecdotally, I've seen the CEO of Recruiting.com underpay his seniors heavily.
Most people don't get married in their early/mid 20's anymore. At least if they work at FB/Google and are native-born Americans. And if they do, their partner makes about as much at a similar company.
> The folks in Phoenix out here can't make that type of money unless they're a Principle Software Engineer/Architect/VP or higher
If they work at Amazon they can as an L6 or above.
In all fairness... the bug you are referring about Lua scripting was added by external contributors via a PR, and I'm not even the one who merged the PR (long story...). Yet I believe that the API made it much simpler to add such a bug, so this is why I talking about Lua API. However your main point, that is, everybody is very fallible, is one that I totally agree with.
By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them.
I don't work in the Bay Area, I work in Phoenix. I imagine it's a different world out there: instead of saving 90% of my income and living in a van, I own a home and save 75%. Instead of talking to people who work at Apple and went to MIT, I talk to people who were self-taught, or attended some other institution I'm not familiar with.
Even the people that I do know who went off to work at Amazon, Apple, or Google aren't even that great of engineers. In fact, they're probably worse engineers than the ones I know at Fortune 500s which aren't even tech companies.
I've seen people who had 25+ years of experience lose a job position to someone who didn't know what `setInterval` was.
To me, an "elite" tech person would be someone who wrote software that people actually cared about and had a strong amount of domain knowledge in a particular area, or prototyped hardware and sold a product that people bought. Even then, these people are flawed just like everyone else. Not too long ago, the author of Redis posted an article about shortcomings of Lua here on HN, and a deep inspection of his post simply yielded the finding that he wrote a Lua binding with a glaring exploit in it, and his entire article revolved around trying to justify his own flaws.
To me having parents that have money doesn't make you elite; it's just something to think is rather nice and want to work toward as well.
It seems to me that there exists a demographic of people in tech that seem impressive to others, but haven't actually contributed anything significant or tangible to the industry. They probably exist in senior positions of companies that I've never heard of that serve a niche that I'm not a part of. I don't know, but they aren't "elite" to me.
Kids, do and make things people care about. School doesn't matter at all. Learning matters. Spending a small fortune to maybe associate with people who will get you a job is trying to play the lottery, but with a far more expensive ticket.
When you're denied a job at a startup after receiving multiple degrees ask yourself if it was worth it. It takes 30 minutes to invalidate 4-8 years of your hard work. People want people who can do the job.