I concur. Consulting is probably a great path. You might not program all that much, as you'll be focused on solving the problem, but you can get paid a lot.

Here's a great playbook from patio11 on this topic: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...

Thanks, I will take a look!

Thanks

Do you mean trying to get a job as a SWE inside FAANG/MAGMA? I guess my concern would be that although the pay is good, it wouldn't really solve the QOL issues. I.e. my impression is that the work isn't necessarily more interesting when you're talking about companies with thousands and thousands of developers, and if you want to advance it would have as much to do with jumping through the right corporate hoops as it would have to do with actual value creation. And I'm sure if anything the IP shackles are much much worse.

But I could be totally wrong, that's mostly speculation and maybe those companies are very good at finding ways to allocate resources to where they can produce the most value.

The IP shackles are worse, for sure, but as a single datapoint, I started a job at G a few months ago and I've very sincerely never been happier. I wouldn't say the work is profoundly more interesting than the work I was doing at other startups, but as an iOS developer, time in Xcode is time in Xcode, and thus far I don't see myself getting bored.

Are you referring to the uncle bob martins of the world who mostly do classes? Surely not 50k a week doing implementation work right?

Well that’s just the point: implementation is not worth fifty thousand dollars, but the solution to a business problem probably is.

“Consult”ing with problem-havers and working out how to make the problem go away.

> Or you could make it known you want to confound a startup.

How would one go about that effectively?

I think it's called MAMAA instead of MAGMA these days.

Honestly any 5-letter acronym will work at this point.

Alphabet shall now be know a a24z.

3 * A --> Alphabet, Apple and what's the third A?

Alcoholics

Amazon

Of course I must have had a bad day… Thanks!