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Comment by schmookeeg | Hacker News Reader

I have traded within a quite tight comp band for my entire 30 year tech career. I am useful in general. I have been valued by being offered "promotions" and "strategic instead of tactical" positions, but I always chafe.

I enjoy the work. I enjoy solving specific problems in tech.

I do not enjoy the "business" of tech and have no interest in any of it.

I definitely have inadequate drive to grow a business and make others wealthy, even if I get a few crumbs.

For me, contracting is the perfect match. I don't need to get involved in your politics, I just need to eat jira tickets. Realiably and well. When there are none to eat, I can go do my own things.

I would need to care a LOT more about the business and dollars to excel at it, and lately I lean in the opposite direction. I see nothing wrong with simply being comfortable and useful. We have it good that we can make this choice.

$0.02 :)

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If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend reading The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”. It's not that it maps to reality perfectly, but it's an interesting lens through which to look at work and your relation to it. It helped me soften my view on some of my coworkers by understanding their motivations better, and also helped me to accept a point of view much more similar to yours about the work I do. Also, if you're a fan of The Office, it's fun to revisit it and examine it in a new way.

1: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

That sounds fascinating, and I worry it will be "humor that is way more documentary than I am at all comfortable with", like, say, Office Space or Idiocracy. :)

Great timing, though, I've been in need of a new read and I'm a Ricky Gervais fan. Thanks!

Did my own stint as a contractor and it was one of the best jobs I ever had. My clients would often ask for something - I would give them my opinion on how it should be done and alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better. They would then choose not to do that and pay me all those extra hours that their poor choice resulted in.

Contrast this to working for an organization. Again I offer my opinion on how it might be done and alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better which results in the same poor choices. Except now I'm stuck supporting that turd of a decision with my own personal unpaid exempt status overtime.

No need to feel apologetic about being smart.

did you stop contracting? what brought you back to the FTE side?

2008 was devastating contracting wise. Starting working for non-profits and have found it rewarding but suffers from similar problems as FTE.

On the plus side I spent a lot of time raising my son in his formative years - time for which I'm thankful. If I had stayed working at start-ups I would have missed that which I would have truly regretted.

Also the start-ups in SV became obsessed with Social Media which IMO is a total waste of electrons so I lost interest.

The relationship between a contractor and a business is more honest: exchange labor time for cash.

Between an employee and employer, enter ideology: I do this because I love it/love helping clients/ working communally to improve the business. Or competition: my bonus is 50 percent of my salary and we're stack-ranked. Or fear: oh my god, I got only Meets Expectations in my review. Will my pay be flat?

And contractors get to not have constant meetings.

To be fair to employers… even high performers need comforting lies some of the time.

(and middling performers a lot more)

I don’t think anyone (excluding the literally deranged) spends their day trying to maximize the number of lies directed at employees.

And also to be fair to employers. A decent amount of employees are not really "doers". Perhaps they contribute in other ways.

Sadly my experience has been that "Perhaps" there is doing more work than it can bear :)

I’m curious / what other ways do people contribute ? This is obviously a blind spot for me.

Like, contributing a sense of fun? Being cheerful?

They move the paper from point A to point B.

I worked with a junior team member who constantly moved around departments chatting with people. From one angle, this looked unproductive. From another angle, they kept everyone apprised of what projects other are working on /major developments in completely different departments - this had wide ranging benefits.

Which comforting lies do you believe high performers need exactly?

I had one job as a contractor where I got hired as a temp. After 6 months they wanted me to join as an employee, but I turned it down because it would have meant travel. They kept re-upping me for 6-month intervals, and it was a good feeling to know that they truly wanted me there. Also, I didn't get a year end review, so I just got to keep working while the other engineers got called in one at a time and then came out pissed off about their lower than expected raise. :-)

I've thought about this issue a lot. What's become clear to me later in life is that I have ADHD and probably autism. This has not only hindered social relationships, it's lethal to your career to.

Why? Because a bit of autism tends to make you good at your job but allistic people can always seemingly tell you're "off", no matter how well you (try and) mask.

And ultimately career progression is a social game. It's not about being good at your job. It's about whether people like you. Sure there are some outliers who get far on technical ability but they succeed in spite of this not because of it.

So when you say you don't enjoy the "business" of tech, it means you've reached your ceiling where it requires influencing other people as direct reports, as a tech leader or both.

If you're in this boat, and a lot of tech people are IME, then my advice is to make your bag while you can because you will be the first to be discarded and you will suffer at the dark, ugly side of tech, which is ageism.

Avoiding ageism is largely a social exercise. If the leadership at your company likes you, they'll keep you. If they don't, they won't. You'll find yourself randomly picked on a round of layoffs sooner or later.

Thanks. I already retired once at 39 with this exact view in mind. I'm frankly amazed I'm still overemployed at 48. But yes, I've been super bearish on the remaining chapters in my career. I've hedged by paying off a (argh, low-interest) mortgage, stacking the bank, and I have a very well developed and near-tech-money side hustle that is ageism resistant.

I keep waiting for this shoe to drop. It hasn't yet. Now the pendulum has swung far enough that I want to preserve my time more than I want to stack more bricks. Amusingly, it's a source of tension with my wife who plans to work for another 15 years and will not be excited to see me out playing without her. (her people live into 100 on the regular. My people die in their 40s and 50s with alarming frequency -- our horizon perspectives are very different :D )

All good problems. If I lose all my tech jobs tomorrow, I will be grateful for the run and not be going hungry. I half expect I'd be relieved.

Yeah tried that in office environment thinking it could work. Got slapped with a "fair" rating last minute. They want you to become one on their side or you are a risk for them.

that's pragmatic, I've launched and exited two things, and I can't bring myself to do it again to solidify my financial circumstances, so I stay employed instead and exclusively

its interesting how there are so many ways to be productive and compensated in this industry doing the same kind of work, but each gatekeeper is so strongly opinionated

like there is this perception that even just a 10 year developer is supposed to be this super soldier doing continual growth - more than just keeping up with frameworks but doing all these advanced other things - as opposed to simply doing the same job for 10 years. I like how the industry has matured for people with less years of experience to be compensated so highly, so I just keep truncating my resume to being at 8-10 years of experience, and plan on doing that forever.

An employee is just a contractor with one client.

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