
What kind of jobs do the software engineers who earn $500K a year do? - nreece
http://www.aminariana.com/essays/million-dollar-handcuffs
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jonathanwallace
Or go read the quora answer that instigated the article as it contains the
images: [http://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-jobs-do-software-
engineers...](http://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-jobs-do-software-engineers-
who-earn-500k-per-year-do).

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falcolas
Thanks for the link. This article annoys me... for every "Type 2" engineer who
completes the stream to the village and gets rewarded handsomely, there are
dozens or hundreds of other "Type 2" engineers who found that they needed to
eat, and went back to carrying buckets.

Becoming a successful "Type 2" as outlined by this article requires having the
resources beforehand to complete such a stream. Enough money to buy food when
there is no income for their work, enough support from peers to encourage
their vision, and the ability (which again usually comes back to money) to
convince the farmers whose fields he is digging through that this will be to
their advantage.

The fact is that not everyone can be a "Type 2" \- and typically not because
of some lack in mental facilities or effort. Those who make it as "Type 2" are
usually lucky: having been born into a situation where they don't have to make
a regular income just to survive.

What's unfortunate is so many "Type 2" folks don't understand that, so they
inherently believe that "Type 1" folks are just too lazy (or dumb) to take the
chances which could obviously land them in the "Type 2" category.

/rant

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djtriptych
Text-only Google cache is readable despite a few missing images. only thing I
could get to load.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N3H4fWz...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N3H4fWzF6yMJ:www.aminariana.com/essays/million-
dollar-handcuffs&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1)

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mml
My father once told me to do what no one else wants to. Good advice.

~~~
gaius
In the 80s and most of the 90s, that was computing, everyone who did it was
scorned as a nerd. But when it became a success - when _we_ made it a success
- now everyone wants a slice of the pie.

~~~
collyw
It was Steve Jobs who made it a success. No one is writing a book or film
about you.

~~~
robinduckett
How is this useful discussion?

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collyw
"when we made it a success" sounds about as ridiculous as every claim that
Steve Job invented almost anything tech related.

~~~
gaius
We as in everyone who was a geek or a nerd in the 80s or 90s. Before computing
was "cool" and "coding" was the latest fashion. Doing the work that no-one
wanted to do as per the parent post.

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9523128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9523128)

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ghshephard
And, given that the median software engineering in Silicon Valley seems to be
around $140K (+/\- $10K) - are the high performance 10x engineers compensated
accordingly?

(I think the answer is to the second question is "Yes", but you need to go
work for a startup and use those 10x skills to make it successful, so that you
can get your 10x compensation in the form of equity)

~~~
joe_the_user
Well,

The argument of the article, as far as I can follow it, seems to be people
making 500k/year are essentially entrepreneurs/inventors - they are paid for
the possibility/probability that they will invent something for the company
rather than for a steady stream of assigned tasks.

That seems different than the legendary "x10" programmer who theoretically
just does the same task ten times as fast as the "ordinary programmer".

~~~
collyw
As someone who considers himself "a few times better" programmer than I was a
few years ago, I wouldn't say that the 10x thing is down to raw programming
speed. More that I think through the problem better, and come up with a more
elegant solution that will require less debugging and maintenance.

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onion2k
If that's earned as a salary then the answer is usually going to be managing a
team of developers. Very few high earning developers get that much for
actually writing code.

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dsmithatx
Application Error An error occurred in the application and your page could not
be served. Please try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

I hope they aren't earning 500k to host this website.

