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Comment by codemog | Hacker News Reader

If you have the balls to create and release something, you’re a legend. Don’t be a corporate NPC trying to look like the smartest person in the meeting and optimizing some stupid KPI for your next promotion packet. Life’s far too short. Save me the cliche rebuttals too, I’ve already heard them.

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Yeah, but for most people, the paycheck from being a 'corporate NPC' is a profound and unbeatable argument.

Rent is due every month and stores don't accept personal IOUs....

Aren’t you all paid really well in the US? (I assume you’re in the US, given the general audience of this website)

I would be really surprised if the majority of HN audience didn’t have decent savings, unless SF is really as expensive as people say online?

Whatever savings you have, you still need to contend with the reality that the US has no real social safety net and it's expensive, esp since the last few years. You are always potentially one doctors visit away from bankruptcy without insurance, and the social safety programs like Medicare and social security only kick in after 65.

The truth is, an overwhelming majority of people in the US live a very precarious life financially speaking. No doubt the US as a whole is a very rich country, but to paraphrase William Gibson, the money is there, just not evenly distributed.

How is this the most upvoted comment? I get great joy out of being a great engineer at work. I LOVE solving hard problems and helping people. People at work using my tools or reading my documents brings me joy.

You can do this and release things! Do both!

Because ultimately a lot of corpo tech is ads bullshit or not nearly far enough from it.

Or it's healthcare bs. And not the cool kind where you help people (tremendous respect for doctors and nurses). The bs kind where you make it slightly more efficient to bill them into bankruptcy.

Or it's generic SaaS which is more or less the most you can hope to get to work on. (It's where I am).

Then there's reams of poorly paid positions where you software mill excel-adjacent LOB apps.

I agree with the sentiment of parent comment. Corporate programming sucks. If you have the opportunity to not be alienated from the product of your labor, do it.

> Corporate NPC

That's a really good description, I should update my linkedin profile :)

You do realize that there is a large spectrum of occupations between a self-employed software developer, and a "corporate NPC", don't you? And, do you really reject all counterarguments outright, like you heard all of them already and there is nothing new you can learn, nor any place of individual circumstances in life?

>NPC

>mog

Touch grass

But the corporations are where all the money is, and the system murders you if you don't have money.

It doesn't reward you if you don't produce anything that someone is willing to pay you for. Who has been murdered for not having money?

Literally every person who died of exposure while homeless.

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