This sounds off to me. Even if the CEO isn't a technical engineer literally working on the code, they are ultimately accountable for getting engineers and designers to build the right product. Building the right product is massively hard. Usually, it takes several wrong takes to get it right. 90% of startups fail.
When an engineer is hired post-traction, they may not see all the scars and dead bodies of those failed attempts. It may seem easy to manage if the product is already a hit, because when there is true PMF it's hard to mess up.
But that's like those stories about how the military in WW2 thought they should be adding armor to the areas of the plane that had holes after sorties. That was totally wrong; the real problem would have been to add the armor to the areas of the plane without holes, because *those planes crashed and were never recovered.* In other words, what "seems easy to sit on the hands" is survivorship bias, and ignores the brutal reality of struggle that any founder will be able to relate with. Assuming that "engineers could run these businesses themselves" indicates a very incomplete understanding of what is involved with actually building and running a business.
Sales is about navigating conversations to match someone's problem to a solution. Product is about navigating conversations to understand problems and figure out what the solution should be in the first place.
I do know one CEO who is "the engineer". They're in a bit of a weird market, and it seems to be working. I rather expect he'll move to a CTO role once they're actually in production, though, when the focus becomes growth.
You haven't had to have meetings with a CEO before, have you?
How much smarter than you are they if you've taken an effective shortcut to getting paid significantly more while doing a lot less work? Working harder, taking all the stress, and earning less doesn't sound that smart.
The poster above you; they're the one who made an implicit claim about the value of software developers' work. You're welcome to disagree. Do you think everyone is paid fairly?
Punishing people for believing in their work is called "exploitation".
Yes.
Personally, I think they're all underpaid. But I don't set their wages. Society does that by agreeing a level of tax people are happy with, and then spending that money on public employee's wages. Collectively society has agreed to pay those people as little as possible. That's the important thing in any wage negotiation - you have to understand where the money is coming from, because ultimately that's who gets to decide the maximum limit of one side of the bargaining process.
So in the case of teachers you have an individual teacher's pay being an agreement between that person and how much Joe Random wants to pay in tax. Teachers are always going to lose out on that one.
The answer is either to educate the public about the value of public wealth (eg why higher taxes are actually better for society in many ways), or to privatise the education system. Neither works well on a national level.
That's not a solution because the people in power materially gain by feigning ignorance.
> Teachers are always going to lose out on that one.
How can you openly admit that the incentives don't work and still defend them?
> Punishing people for believing in their work is called "exploitation".
What is the relevance of this?
Being smart and how much you make aren't related. There are researchers working at universities in Europe being paid miserable salaries and yet making incredible discoveries (like medical ones) and these are incredibly smart people.
Meanwhile there are people with only a few neurons connecting raking in millions on "only fans".
And, no, the later aren't smarter than the former.
What else could anyone want?
Heck, today i saw Sepp Hochreiter sitting in the tram on his way to uni. He could do anything in the world, yet he chooses to live the european academic life.
Think about it, who's funding these researchers you're celebrating?
I'd argue being smart is linked to money. You don't need to spend all your time exploiting the markets if you're smart, but just enough to build a resource pool that can enable your endeavors. People work with what they got - in your latter example, they're selling their body. If academics were functionally smart, then it's a simple task for them to be able to exploit and win against a capitalist market.
If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?I find it deeply troubling that so many people conflate “being smart” with “min-maxing labor and earning”. It reflects the strange belief that the best people are the best capitalists.
I take issue with the thesis that money is crystallized virtue where more of one is more of the other.
I suppose it is what people need to believe, however. Good luck with that, I guess?
And they're veeeery vocal other people trying to get something for nothing.
There are smart people burdened with moral compass, which forces them to "do the right thing" which might be pursuing their passion or contributing to society.
Then there are smart people who are happen to exploit social structures to get ahead.
There are also plenty of not particularly smart people who figure out how to get ahead exploiting social structures.
Doesn't make the smart people who actually have a consciousness to answer to less smart than the rest
This is not about smartness, but about willingness for ass-kissing and ability of to play political games. This is not associated with intelligence, but with dark triad traits. Quite some smart people look through all this, but are incapable of changing the situation.
TPMs, due to their role, work across orgs and interface more with leadership so they do seem to get a lot more visibility/exposure than normal ICs and do seem to get promoted into leadership positions more easily. My wife is less technical and is looking for a career change and last year I literally suggested this path for her.
(you can argue separately that this isn't as important which I might agree with on a case by case basis in that I've seen really strong leaders who are less technical who make up for in various ways but it's not the common case).
Or in my case get PIP’d from Amazon with a nice severance and found a much less stressful job within three weeks at a smaller company. My hearts always been at smaller companies and I knew from the minute I virtually walked into AWS I wanted to go back to smaller companies.
I was actually just interviewing someone for a position for a green field project where I’m leading the backend parts across teams. I needed to be able to “fire and forget” an assignment where the requirements weren’t clear and there will probably be a lot of XYProblems.
I need them to talk to the vendor/customer, come up with a game plan, research the technology and present their idea to the team. I want them to know how to talk to developers, technical directors who don’t want to get into the weeds and non technical people.
After they have done the research - especially about a technology I don’t know - I want to lean on them to teach me and for me to be able to go to for advice.
I’ve given the thumbs up plenty of times for team members and now dotted line reports that impressed me by giving me “imposters syndrome”.
TPM here. More cross-org work: Yes. Interface more with leadership: Yes. Visibility/exposure: Yes. Easier promotions? Nope. Not in my experience.
There are fewer of us, therefore our org chart trees don't grow as fast as engineers' trees, therefore there are fewer opportunities to add a layer and move into it as a manager.
I've never seen someone on the TPM ladder directly manage SWEs at google. Microsoft is different, the whole place is a shit show.
Very possible i'm wrong though.
PMs are often the same, although the position can have value if there's clear expectations and enough sales/customer complexity to warrant it.
SWE: Software Engineer
SDM: Software Development Manager
All the various "PMs" at companies I've worked for have done largely the same jobs that are some mix of managing the project and figuring out new features for the product.
Find engineering/product first companies. Big tech ain't it any longer.
Now they are just large advertising platforms that do something to attract users and user data.
I think under similar logic, if you want to work for those companies for comp/prof development, it’s probably whatever next money printer is building out.
IMO this is probably AI, next-gen adtech that keeps the technology going post-GDPR etc (platform plays like FAANG or great user enumeration companies in the open ecosystem, although a lack of a non-obvious adtech product might limit the growth and prestigious of these types) maybe some top cybersecurity vendors if the problems get worse and regulations get serious, maybe defense tech (second gen ones following what Palantir did).
My personal preference and risk appetite takes me to successful small public companies or well-funded startups.
If I don't have a risk appetite, I'd go government or boring F500 companies that are starving for engineers.
Wherever I go, I am very particular about the mission and that I get along with the team and manager. The less the bureaucracy, the more likely I am to enjoy working for them.
But there is no way I will work for big tech with their miserable processes, culture and exploitative management. I am here to work, not to constantly walk on eggshells for BS rules.
OK, that was harsh. But not always far from the truth!
The pattern is identical in other industries and even in academia. Professors are supposed to be technical staff, but in reality most have become middle-managers bossing around scientists much smarter than them (paraphrasing the OP). Plus, they usually claim all credit for any breakthrough.
As a European, I think the US industry is much more innovative because this is less of a problem. It is still an issue, but at least technical people get some recognition.
But the situation is improving somewhat. At least that’s my impression. Like a drunk that has hit rock bottom we’re on our way to recovery. :)
> 2. Get hired into a higher level than you could in a SWE role.
It's also a part of the reason why at least historically there is such an insane hate for managers in hacker culture.
The political savviness so scorned by the in-the-trenches coder might actually be communication, capacity for broader context, strategic foresight, emotional intelligence to debug and optimise teams, among the many other skills required to execute a product/project beyond programming. And good leads will pluck coders showing these skills out of the engineering corps and set them on a TPM track.
Perhaps it is only rarely the case. But it seems fair to observe that it is gentler on the ego to cast these rare and hard-earned skills as “playing the game”, PM mumbled-jumbo, etc.
At the same time, operators in bad faith tend to deploy just these skills, and a bad experience can incline one to wash their hands of it all and crave the rough diamonds of the cave…
Honestly that’s not bad advice though. I did something like you recommended. A recruiter from Amazon Retail reached out to me about applying for an SDE position in mid 2020. I wasn’t about to sell my big house in the burbs of Atlanta that I just had built in 2016 to work at Amazon in Seattle “when Covid lifted”. Besides I hadn’t had to do a coding interview - ever. As an enterprise CRUD developer who knew AWS, had a network and knew how to talk to people.
After I kept talking to her, she suggested I apply for a remote role at AWS ProServe specializing in app dev + cloud. There was no coding interview.
I’m far from naive. I was 46 at the time on my 7th job and new from reputation and second hand experience that eventually Amazon is going to Amazon.
I was well prepared when I got Amazoned.
I like most of this comment, but this I always think this perspective completely misses the point.
No matter how technical your role is, working with other people is always going to be the most important part of your job. No matter how technically talented you are, your ability to deliver value to an organisation is going to be strictly bottlenecked by your ability to work with others.
This is especially true for leadership roles, where success or failure in the job is almost entirely decided by people skills.
You can have a technical founder who understands the product perfectly, and the understands the market perfectly, and has a brilliant strategic vision. But if they can’t lead people effectively, if they can’t represent the business to the public, if they can’t develop trust among the customers, then they have basically none of the skills required to run the business.
I think this is almost always false. And I say this as someone who has worked with many startups, and who has been both a lead engineer and a CTO.
I have seen so many startups fail because either:
1. They cannot talk to customers, or
2. They cannot close deals.
It is absolutely shocking how many startups have put in 3 years of heroic engineering effort, but still don't even know the job title of the person who would make the actual decision to buy their software.
But if you have a non-technical CEO who can convince 10 potential customers to sign a non-binding letter of intent, then you're in the game. Take that a competent investor and they'll find you a CTO.
1. Climb to highest rung that is readily handed out on IC ladder
2. Agree to take on more leadership/management tasks, or even go full-time. (Impact, amirite)
3. After a few years: job hop elsewhere, using your combined tech and management experience
4. Enter at staff/principal, skipping the sometimes brutal process of getting there directly from IC.
Like the OP, this exploits the fact that the highest leverage you have is entering an org
I had the same painful conversation with my boss that a lot of us have had: Became the top subject matter expert on my growing team, team grew to the point where my boss needed to insert a few managers under him, pitched myself for it and ultimately he hired outside the team because he needed someone who had already been a manager. This exact thing has happened in my last three companies.
Very few companies actually have pure IC roles that are truly parallel (in comp and prestige) with the people management ladder.
Hope your luck changes on this front.
Can you clarify this? They don't have soft skills? (And perhaps lacking in biz skills, e.g., working understanding of marketing?) But still they can run the company?
My experience has been different. Technology is relatively the easy part. People? On the other hand? People - leading, managing, marketing to them, etc. - is 10x more difficult. Human behavior is a complicated system. It's not something you can throw a couple of engineers at and poof! X weeks later you have a semi-perfect solution.
1. Transfer to a TPM role at somewhere like Amazon or Microsoft. Bar is much lower to get into this role.
2. Get hired into a higher level than you could in a SWE role.
3. Transfer within the company to being an SDM
4. Now you are one level higher, in a management role, that would have taken you 5+ years of grinding and some luck to get into.
5. Spend a few years in this role, switch to other big co, makikg 400-500k+ while bossing around engineers much smarter than you.
^This path is how people are doing it. Never take equity in a startup, never grind away as a mid level engineer, fighting with ten other engineers for one promotion.
Edit:
Adding one point to this, if you found a company with a non technical CEO, and the company sees some success, all the focus will be on the CEO. The CTO role is highly replaceable, and there is a massive power shift that occurs once there is traction with a "finished" product. The CEO, especially in B2B Saas, is the face of the company. So the CEO can sit on his hands the whole time the product is developed, but then does reap huge gains. There's no easy answer, as many engineers do not have the soft skills for the role. But arguably, they could run these businesses themselves.