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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Something that has always surprised me a bit is how many developers want to run their own large companies. Wanting to run a small company is largely about personal freedom that comes for not having a boss, but wanting to be the head of a large business is a whole different ballgame. It's a role that encompasses strategy, leadership, and management - 3 things that can only really be done by talking to people and understanding them. It's a very different role to writing code. Most developers who enjoy writing code run away from meetings given the slightest opportunity, yet they also covet a job that's 90% about having meetings.

For a very long time that was my own journey. I got up to CTO level for a while. Then I realized I just don't enjoy it, so now I'm a senior engineer again. Wanting to be a CEO takes a very specific mindset.

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There are just as many headaches in running a small company and frankly it's overly romanticized by so many people.

There is no such thing as 'not having a boss' unless you live in a cabin in the woods, independent of the world.

Either you work for a corp. with a manager, with what are frankly relatively clear functions - or - you work for the whims of the market and or consulting customers (and possibly a board and investors) in which case you adopt an utterly different tone and there's no expectations of clarity or consistency and you're always on your heels.

I don't think people have an internal conception for how that 'stability, clarity and peace of mind' that they seek is actually a total luxury, something which all those people working out there struggle and toil to create. Like a little cottage on the ocean that doesn't move with the big waves, it's a fabrication, something constructed, not a 'simpler escape' detached from the system.

I thought not having management and only customers would beat having both, investors are the worst kind of management so IMHO. Turned out that having some layers of management between you and customers / investors is a nice thing to have. Especially if said management isn't completely incompetent.

> Something that has always surprised me a bit is how many developers want to run their own large companies.

I am surprised at how few of them do, considering how low the barriers of entry to company making in tech are (compared to other industries with heavy requirements in space, equipment, expertise and regulations)

So I am also surprised at your experience. Most devs I know just wanna code.

I don't believe there is anyone out there who just likes to sell. It is an incredibly volatile way to make a consistent living. Specially asking them to believe that only you believe in.

We all know that developer who wanted to start their own startup/product but felt into hard times and so to keep the lights running they started to do consultancy/freelancing on the side. Then consultancy became their main thing and the startup was sent to the back burner or they just quit the venture entirely.

> So I am also surprised at your experience. Most devs I know just wanna code.

Same here. Never heard of any developer wanting to be CEO of a big company. Typically startup, yes, but that's mostly for "independence" and doing something cool, faster, etc.

First, I think you're very wrong about how many devs want to run their own companies. Or at least, want it enough to make any step in that direction (just wanting it like wanting to win the lottery doesn't count for much, IMO).

Second, I also think you have a very common but incorrect view of what a developer even is. You write:

> Most developers who enjoy writing code run away from meetings given the slightest opportunity,

Most developers don't necessarily enjoy writing code. Some do, to be sure, but a lot view writing code as a means to an end. Sometimes that end is money; sometimes that end is to create products. And if what you want is money, or to create new products (or to have new experiences, or to have a fancy job title, etc), all of those are reasons to want to run a large company. (Not all of these are what I would consider good reasons, but they are reasons).

Secondly, you can really hate meetings when your job is to write code, but also would enjoy meetings when your job is no longer only about writing code. Forget running large companies - most people who get even a mid-level manager position will be busy in meetings for a large amount of their time, and will rarely if ever code, and this is considered a very desirable career path by many devs (though not all, to be sure).

"how many developers want to run their own large companies"

Think they want to run their own large companies.

I went through a version of that, I wanted my own company, large enough to justify the name and having people doing the work but small enough to be more operational involved as a large corp CEO. Turned out I didn't like running a company, the smallest one imaginable, at all. Now I'm back in employment as a supply chain ops manager, and that is so much more fun! I just have to reign my urge to pursue "large" improvements from time to time. If I can finally do that, that will he the most fun, and chill, job ever.

It's much more surprising that people equate "run a small company" with "freedom", when in every measurable way you're much freeer being a conformant employee in a good place.

Might be referring to the concept of a lifestyle business [0]

> A lifestyle business is a business set up and run by its founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; or to provide a foundation from which to enjoy a particular lifestyle.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business

One book that helped me understand these challenges was "Hard things about hard things". I recommend/gift the book to any (engineer) friend who is burning to start his own business. It's a different game. Even Sr. Engineer is a different game than coding, we spend some time on System design, mentoring, presenting technical outcomes of our work/PoCs, writing new product requirements, .. etc. I think these tasks require other skillsets as well.

hey thanks, i added this book to my libby always open to reading books related to this subject

The flip side is that one will be a much better senior engineer after having been a CEO (or even a manager, or just had a diversity of roles). Most managers say they care more about soft skills than hard skills, and that's actually how you build those soft skills.

Most engineers like tech, but have little exposure to how they interact with the larger organizational structure and design, with customers, with fundraising, and with a slew of other things. Stepping through a few roles gives that visibility. That makes for a better engineer.

I'll start and end my career in a tech role, but I do periodically do dives into other sorts of roles in the meantime.

As a developer you're often seen as a one trick pony who is destined to stay at the bottom. If I get to make it to CEO that would be far beyond my wildest dreams.

> ...how many developers want to run their own large companies.

This sounds like an unremarkable subset of {vaguely dissatisfied lower-level workers who dream of a new job with far more power, fame, money, and/or interesting stuff}.

Similar are the people who read novels (at least occasionally), and have dreams of becoming a famous author. In my experience, ~0% of them are actually willing to sit down and try to write a 3-page story.

I don't entirely want to be CEO, what I want is ultimate control over things I'm interested in, which is definitely not everything involved in being CEO.

If I say "no that would be bad, goes against my ethics, increases tech debt too much, bad for UX, etc." I don't want anybody to override me, even though generally decisions ultimately fall on the CEO.

The answer is status. Most developers are (despite being comparatively well-paid) quite low-status: people tell them what to do all the time and they are expected to comply. By contrast CEO is pretty much the top of the status pole. It is natural for human beings to crave status so it is natural to dream about being CEO even if most won't particularly enjoy it.

I think that the issue is that many developers want to write "good" code but are forced to write code as quickly as possible to get features out the door. If you already don't enjoy your work because you are not able to take enough time to do it well, then even if you don't enjoy it, you may as well be the person in charge.

I don’t covet the role. I just feel I’d be marginally better than others that suck at it.

There was a study about some skill, and like 80% of people thought they are better than average.

If a relatively small number suck HUGELY at a skill then 80% may be better than average. (50% will be better than median.)

I'm no native English speaker but at least in my experience average is used to mean any "central tendency", and not the mean in particular.

We probably should just avoid saying "average" and use "mean", "mode", "median", or whatever we actually mean instead.

As a native speaker average is almost exclusively used to for mean and people specify median or mode when that’s what they are talking about. The same way people say mean without specifying arithmetic, geometric, or harmonic mean then it’s the arithmetic mean.

It’s only when someone says something like the average family rather than saying the average income when things get ambiguous. Typical on the other hand is closer to mean because it’s tossing out outliers.

I generally think of “typical” as being the median rather than the mean.

Ops yep, I meant median.

I have to agree. Level of suck at management is also unrelated to any one quantified linear scale so the mean is the result of a particularly arbitrary personal (or national like GPA with range bias vs 0-20 with other bias) definition of a corresponding numerical ratings so median and mode have fewer degrees of freedom for arbitrary results.

It is also pretty absurd to assume without explanation that a minority who are especially bad at management have even their minority presence in management given that if sucking matters it should correlate with some type of failure that eventually correlates to drop out.

People often repeat this (also in different contexts, e.g. driving skills) as a "proof" that most people don't know math.

In fact, it's the other way around - a proof that the person suggesting this doesn't know math.

If 80% are skilled at 1 and 20% are skilled at -100, then most are better than average.

Or: Imagine a room of people. Bill Gates walks into that room. Most people are now below-average wealthy.

Median it is then.

Ok, say that that is true. I’m much happier subjecting myself to my own suckage than someone elses, so that’s a good motivation too :)

I know that feeling, I learned the hard way so that having better ideas, and seeing stuff you propose after 2 years kind a proofs that, is different from actually acting upon these ideas when you are in a position of power.

Agree. I was the CEO of a successful small business for 5+ years but realised that I didn’t enjoy it. I am much happier slinging code.

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