Ask HN: Where’s the best place to be in tech? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where’s the best place to be in tech?

33 pointsbaron81623 comments

Company? Sector? Field? Etc?

For me, working for a small/medium company building something real. None of social media, Microsoft, Amazon or Google. Something that builds precision lasers for engineering, something like packaging or manufacturing or warehouse management. That may be boring on the outside and less glamorous than being a "innovation strategist" at TikTok, but these are real, honest, clean jobs that are not ethically questionable and where you test your effectiveness against reality. As long as they are in a stable market you will have job security and decent colleagues around you with pleasant working culture. (Speaking from European perspective).

Currently I'm a CS university student, and when i think about my 'career' [assuming i will have one] i think something like you mentioned. Something in user security or complex system/embedded security space. I think the word "reality" does the heavy lifting on what i want and what you described.

I think it's difficult to quantify "best", but I left an SWE job to run my own business in a low-tech, "dirty" job[1] where software, automation and mathematical decision making is typically not applied.

Currently out-earning a typical senior engineer, working maybe 30 hours a week and regularly taking time away from work to spend with my wife and young daughter.

[1]Specifically, used video games. But there are heaps of markets out there where technology and process is greatly under-utilised. Almost all of them are not high-status; that's why smart and educated people avoid them.

This has been my idea for starting a business too. Glad to hear there's a way to make a living out of it. It always seemed to me that the used video game market was tough to get into; lots of competition, easy to enter, have to deal with theft and other costs of maintaining physical (and in some case decaying) product. I've seen enough stores go out of business to scare me away from quitting my day job for it.

>I've seen enough stores go out of business to scare me away from quitting my day job for it.

To clarify, I ran it as a side gig before making any serious moves!

Now that sounds very interesting. How are you competing in such a tight market? Most of used games places in my city vanished over the years and even gamestop is closing down some of its stores. Are you doing it online only?

You're buying and selling video games if I understand it correctly?

Curious what you mean by "best place to be".

Are you asking: "what's the most secure job?" "where will I make the most money?" "what's most exciting?" "what's the next big thing?" "big company vs startup?"

A healthy mix? Or maybe where to be for each?

It's a highly personal question dependent on interests, location, and what your role is.

Don't join a company out of FOMO or skyrocketing valuations just because they have a skyrocketing valuation. A good place to be is a place you get to enjoy going to each day that provides you with enough money for the lifestyle you want. It's not a one-size-fits-all.

What are you naturally curious about?

I love this thread. The question is so unspecific that it's like a version of "To get the right answer you need to post something wrong on the internet".

India. Controversial answer but bear with me. If you are SE Asian or white India is the best place to be right now for tech. Companies and salaries are booming , bar. to entry to get into newer tech stack and management is lower. With the recession as companies look to cut costs they will move more jobs to India. White folks get treated as expat managerial Gods . Basically you can learn new technologies without prior experience that US companies always want , become a manager and climb the ladder and have opportunities that take way longer and a lot of luck in the US. You can then come back to the US after that and use that experience. If you can stand the infrastructure and other social problems .

What’s the expected average salary an european software engineer with around 8 years or experience could expect working (remotely) for an Indian company?

Depends what metric you're goaling on. The San Francisco Bay Area still pays the best in the world and has most of the industry leading companies, although the emergence of mainstream remote work is opening this up a bit. New York and Seattle are not quite the same for the startup scene, but they have plenty of big tech presence. I haven't personally experienced it, but from what I hear about culture in Western Europe, the work-life balance is much better compared to the United States.

How does the bay area stack up for the more average bay-area-tech-worker once you’ve factored in cost of living? It’s very confusing for me because the COL basically makes a double salary equivalent to where I’m currently living. I’m confused, though, because any additional income on top of that salary isn’t necessarily affected by COL. A vacation costs the same to the same location, for example.

I do test automation in Javascript (Cypress) as part of the QA team at a small (less than 100-person) startup solving a real problem and making revenue from customers. I like it a lot compared to other roles I've worked in tech (sales, manual QA, large companies, agencies). YMMV.

As a quick off the cuff answer: web development probably has the greatest job security. It doesn’t pay like a specialized skill, but everyone and his brother needs a website developed and maintained.

What are your values?

SF, then SEA for mindshare alone!

How do you tap into this mindshare?

Wherever you can find and keep employment, it would seem.

The best place to be in tech is probably a tech company

Should be a place hasn't been discovered yet

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