
The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, Part 3: Where to go and why - brett
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/the-pmarca-gu-1.html
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ardit33
One thing he failed to mention, whatever you do, make sure you are in the
money "making part of the bussiness".

E.g. If you are tech person, work on a pure technology company, where the
product you are making is the money maker. You will be treated much better, as
the company will try to maximize your productiviy.

If you are a tech guy, working, let's say in a finance company, where
technology is considered as an "expense", then you will never be treat as
well, b/c you are less worth to the company, and they will always try to
minimise your expense.

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rms
I learned this when I was working at US Airways in the maintenance half of the
company. You wouldn't believe how much money the ancient software being used
cost the company, but no one would spend money to upgrade the software because
maintenance only cost the company money.

A rarely mentioned difference between the legacy airlines and profitable ones
like Southwest is that Southwest is not running operations and maintenance on
70s era mainframe software.

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kingkongrevenge
I've seen the opposite twice. Rock solid old mainframe systems are replaced
just for the sake of replacing them, with poor outcomes.

For the most part I've been impressed with mainframe systems. The old
languages suck, but if I had a big IO bound problem with very high reliability
requirements I'd give IBM a call.

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rms
This is why US Airways is screwed... the cost of replacing the mainframe is
incredibly high and the cost of not replacing is incredibly high. Meanwhile,
Southwest gets to operate with a modern computer system.

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rms
Biotech sounds like a good industry to get based on pmarca's standards. I'd
love to move to the world capital of biotech, but I actually have no idea
where it is or if there even is one.

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menloparkbum
Biotech is a huge and broad-ranging field. It could be a really old, staunchy
industry (people have been making drugs and making biological modifications
since forever), or a brand new thing, depending on your vantage point. You
need a lot of specialized equipment. Results are slow. You pretty much need a
PhD in order to do any sort of meaningful work in the field. Etc. It really
depends on what you mean, but the national capitals for a lot of innovative
biotech work in the USA are Bay Area and Boston.

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timr
Small correction: you need a PhD, several years of post-doctoral work, and a
contact on the inside. Even then, after 13+ years of post-secondary education
and slave-wage "training," you might very well find yourself un- or under-
employed by age 40, because you're considered too expensive or (ironically)
too specialized.

There are so many new bio PhDs minted every year that the labor supply is
_far_ out-pacing demand. Right now, the big names (I'm lookin' at you,
Genentech...) are hiring extremely talented people into glorified lab-tech
positions.

In short, biotech is no panacea.

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nostrademons
"There are so many new bio PhDs minted every year that the labor supply is far
out-pacing demand."

If you want a science field where demand far outpaces supply, try geology,
with an eye toward either oil or mining. In the oil industry, there are 30,000
qualified geologists to fill 90,000 jobs. My sister's salary offer jumped $10K
in the year she delayed entry into the workforce.

She also says that there's a huge software opportunity in geology, because
existing software _sucks_. However, you need some pretty specialized domain
knowledge, and you'll be competing against Schlumberger and Halliburton.
That's great for technical superiority, but you'll probably have difficulty
breaking into Halliburton's old-boy network.

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davidw
> hell, people often don't even care who the top filmmaker in New York is, and
> quite a lot of films get made out of New York.

Picking nits, I would say that Woody Allen has a claim at that title, and is
not exactly a lightweight in the film industry.

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dfens
I thought so too, but apparently not so much:

"As his star waned and box office numbers dwindled, U.S. studios began to
demand more control over casting and other major decisions."

<http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/FilmFest/article/256029>

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trekker7
So what do you all think are the best, high-growth sub-industries within the
current software technology world?

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kingkongrevenge
Defense, Homeland Security, and Intelligence contracting and product
development are huge growth markets. But that's probably not what you have in
mind.

