Re:Ask HN: I have the dream to retire when I turn 40
by madamelic on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @04:12PM
(#13074739)
I'm glad to see I am not crazy.
I really dislike the idea of being a specialist. I feel like a dweeb for banging on about disliking "corporate culture". I don't know how else to express that thought.
But yeah, I go crazy if I am specialized / pigeon-holed into only doing one thing all day, every day.
Re:Ask HN: I have the dream to retire when I turn 40
by chrisbennet on Thursday December 01, 2016 @02:54AM
(#13077941)
"I'm glad to see I'm not crazy."
That doesn't prove you're not crazy. ;-) Call it ADHD, but I'd go nuts (nuttier?) doing the same thing every day too. These days I'm doing a computer vision project (C++/OpenCV/3D math) and a laser monitoring project(C#/WPF). I just wrapped up a radar graphics project(C++/OpenGL).
Large companies tend to have enough employees that people tend to specialize - it's an optimal arrangement for them[1]. Your "reward" for becoming the expert with technology "X" is that after a while you mostly get assigned to work with "X".
At a small company, that is less likely to happen. At my last job as an employee in a 2 developer company I would find myself doing high level GUI (WPF/C#), low level computer vision (algorithms/C++) and bit-banging stuff out a communications port while watching the responses from the laser controller using a data logger - all in the same week. A small company can't afford to have a developer dedicated to a single thing so by necessity you wind up wearing a lot of hats and learning a lot in the process.
[1] See theory of comparative advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage