

Ask HN: How does one stay geeky and secure good pay checks? - srazzaque

This applies to those that may want to be able to fall back to
employed gigs when they're not working exclusively on startups and/or
side projects. Many of us here are working on our own things on the
side, and there's a need to ensure that (1) we're well paid on the day
job, and (2) the work is still technical enough to compliment our side
work.<p>It's a global market place now, and as programmers we're often
competing against not just Australia's best or (insert your country /
local city / university)'s best, it's the world's best - and there are
likely people in the world that are cheaper to hire than you that can
do the same thing. This is what keeps us in our game, forces us to
innovate, and makes this one of the most rapidly evolving industries
in the world - so I think in an overall sense it's a great thing.<p>However, I've noticed that the natural inclination in working "for the
man" is for people to want to get away from the tech work as fast as
they can, to work their way through the ranks of management. Reasons
often cited are that "tech work can get outsourced very easily", or
that "it's just the thing to do when you want to get higher pay". But
what if you really like the tech work?<p>In light of this, I'm really curious as to HN's opinion: what do you
see as the key qualities, skills and attributes needed to keep your
hands dirty (i.e. stay focussed on hands-on work, not managerial) and
still remain extremely well-sought after and well paid?
======
ryanto
Work hard

Produce quality code you are proud of. Believe in what you are writing and why
you are writing it.

Focus on making good decisions.

~~~
srazzaque
I agree with this fully - especially the "proud of" part. I hate having my
name on some code that I had to hack up as a personal temporary solution, then
have it slowly move into production as _the_ solution because 'it works'...

------
gexla
This is a door which swings two ways. As the world technical expertise is
rising, emerging markets are also rising. This means that while we have more
competition, there is also rising demand to eat up that talent.

There may be a pain point in the transition, but I believe that domestic
markets for developers will keep demand high and availability tight. Look at
Chinese manufacturing as an example. China started out as the factory for the
world but now the Chinese are looking more towards serving their domestic
markets.

U.S. companies are seeing China as an opportunity for growth in sales rather
than as a source for cheap labor. Today, developers are bringing in high
paying gigs from the West and worrying about competition from developing
nations. Tomorrow, developers are going to be competing for work originating
from those same developing nations.

"and there are likely people in the world that are cheaper to hire than you
that can do the same thing"

I don't think it's that simple. I'm a U.S. citizen living in the Philippines
and I have found that live here isn't necessarily cheaper than anywhere else.
In some cases things are more expensive. The reason people are living cheaper
here isn't because of some national discount on everything for being a member
of the "developing nation club," but rather it's because far more people are
living in poverty. They have far lower expectations of "having stuff" than
people in the U.S. have.

I have also found lately that as a Western developer, I'm not always the most
expensive option. I have found that dev shops from India are often charging
more than I do. In some cases it's because they have simply progressed to a
point where they have been able to raise their rates by being better at
selling, and in other cases it's because they don't have the same knowledge as
I do in certain areas and aren't as accurate in their estimates.

A typical developer in the Philippines may start out cheap, but as he makes
more money his expectations will rise. He will raise his rates as he is able
to just like any other developer would. Eventually he is charging global
market rates which is as much or more as you are charging. Again, the pain
point is the period where that developer is competing with the same work you
are competing for in your home country. Eventually he will be able to get
those rates in the Philippines and you may be competing with him for work from
his own country. The tables have turned!

Don't worry about the competition. Keep doing your thing and growing. As the
world economy grows and technology progresses, there will be more
opportunities. When this web thing got started, one guy would develop an
entire site and he would call himeself a web master. Today it's getting more
difficult to be the guy who can cover all bases. We can still do that for a
simple site, but many of us are sticking to our strong points and letting
other developers take care of the rest. These days I rarely work alone. This
evolution creates new niche areas every day and in those areas you only have
to run a little faster than the masses.

~~~
srazzaque
Good response and well put - I tend to agree that labour price differences
eventually work themselves out when service providers start to work out what
they CAN charge, especially in light of domestic demand increases.

As for the other aspect of the question, I'm interested to hear your take on
the 'geek vs management' aspect.

Where this comes from is here: I've worked alongside and known many developers
who are slightly older workers (the 40+ mark), and they seem to be under this
impression that they've lost their edge, and they aren't as good as they used
to be when they were younger (my age), when they were mainframe guns.

Not sure why this is the case, and I'm fairly certain it's a mental thing more
than anything else - others in their peer groups have either gone into
management or in some way left the technical stuff behind, and they may feel
as though they've lost out in terms of pay and opportunities - _because_ they
stayed tech. So the 'norm' for a lot of folks is to try and leave the tech
game behind asap and move into management.

Do you think this is a simple case of getting stuck in a "my XYZ technology is
the best for EVERYTHING" rut?

~~~
gexla
I'm not sure I can relate because I have never worked in that environment. If
I'm not working for myself, then I'm working for very small start-ups.

I operate on the principle that I need to go out and hustle to get what I
want. I can't just sit around waiting for things to come to me (if I do that I
will starve.) Tech skills are important here, but far more important is the
ability to sell. Anyone can pick up the tech skills, but not everyone can
sell. The top 5% engineers can probably sell solely through their tech skills,
but the other 95% needs to play on different strengths.

So, maybe those guys just lost their hustle? Maybe they are in that certain
spot where they can bitch but really they are content? I'm assuming that these
guys are still getting paid pretty well even if they aren't making as much as
the managers.

