The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, Part 3: Where to go and why | Hacker News Reader

The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, Part 3: Where to go and why

blog.pmarca.com

33 pointsbrett20 comments

One thing he failed to mention, whatever you do, make sure you are in the money "making part of the bussiness".

E.g. If you are tech person, work on a pure technology company, where the product you are making is the money maker. You will be treated much better, as the company will try to maximize your productiviy.

If you are a tech guy, working, let's say in a finance company, where technology is considered as an "expense", then you will never be treat as well, b/c you are less worth to the company, and they will always try to minimise your expense.

I learned this when I was working at US Airways in the maintenance half of the company. You wouldn't believe how much money the ancient software being used cost the company, but no one would spend money to upgrade the software because maintenance only cost the company money.

A rarely mentioned difference between the legacy airlines and profitable ones like Southwest is that Southwest is not running operations and maintenance on 70s era mainframe software.

I've seen the opposite twice. Rock solid old mainframe systems are replaced just for the sake of replacing them, with poor outcomes.

For the most part I've been impressed with mainframe systems. The old languages suck, but if I had a big IO bound problem with very high reliability requirements I'd give IBM a call.

This is why US Airways is screwed... the cost of replacing the mainframe is incredibly high and the cost of not replacing is incredibly high. Meanwhile, Southwest gets to operate with a modern computer system.

Another way of thinking about this is: don't take a job where your compensation is tied to a finite metric.

E.g. jobs that are paid by the hour, or based on how many units of something you produce.

That is not really accurate. High skill jobs with finite metric's can pay well because it's easy to find your worth.

EX: A sales guy for a consulting firm that brings in 100 million a year in business can make a few million a year.

However a low skilled sales guy at the local Fry's is limited in how much he can bring in. The real trick is to find a <B>highly valuable</B> skill with finite metric's where you can be unusually productive. One of the best examples of this is Linemen in football vs. running backs. It's hard to demonstrate the difference between the best 99.99% and the 99.98% Linemen, but if you average .2 extra yards per play as a running back you can and will get payed for that.

PS: At some point it all comes back to basic economics. Find something in limited supply that people want and you will get payed for it.

The guy at Fry's is a hourly wage worker, despite his title.

But the salesman who can convince Fortune 500 firms to spend millions on software licenses is an example of the type of person I was talking about, because there are no limits placed on him as to how much revenue he may bring in.

Also, not sure your if football example makes sense: if what you say about linemen is true, why do some get drafted in the first round?

I agree with you 95%. I've worked on both sides, and it is much, much better on the product development side.

That said, I've heard that technology is a big enough deal at many finance companies that top programmers may be considered a comptetitive advantage, rather than just a cost.

That said, I agree with you that a pure technology company is the best bet, because you know you'll be in money making role, whereas you only might be in finance.

Biotech sounds like a good industry to get based on pmarca's standards. I'd love to move to the world capital of biotech, but I actually have no idea where it is or if there even is one.

Make it Pittsburgh, rms. Or Singapore, maybe? Don't bring any chewing gum or spraypaint, though.

I'm not even really sure what biotech is.

The biggest concentration of pharmaceutical and medical device companies is in the Delaware valley.

There are lots of subdivisions of biotech, just like there are lots of subdivisions of information technology... you can drill down from web technology to web services, then to consumer facing social media, etc...

I don't think there is a capital for the new model of biotech I'm going by... here's hoping that Grahamian philosophy works with biology.

Biotech is a huge and broad-ranging field. It could be a really old, staunchy industry (people have been making drugs and making biological modifications since forever), or a brand new thing, depending on your vantage point. You need a lot of specialized equipment. Results are slow. You pretty much need a PhD in order to do any sort of meaningful work in the field. Etc. It really depends on what you mean, but the national capitals for a lot of innovative biotech work in the USA are Bay Area and Boston.

Small correction: you need a PhD, several years of post-doctoral work, and a contact on the inside. Even then, after 13+ years of post-secondary education and slave-wage "training," you might very well find yourself un- or under-employed by age 40, because you're considered too expensive or (ironically) too specialized.

There are so many new bio PhDs minted every year that the labor supply is far out-pacing demand. Right now, the big names (I'm lookin' at you, Genentech...) are hiring extremely talented people into glorified lab-tech positions.

In short, biotech is no panacea.

"There are so many new bio PhDs minted every year that the labor supply is far out-pacing demand."

If you want a science field where demand far outpaces supply, try geology, with an eye toward either oil or mining. In the oil industry, there are 30,000 qualified geologists to fill 90,000 jobs. My sister's salary offer jumped $10K in the year she delayed entry into the workforce.

She also says that there's a huge software opportunity in geology, because existing software sucks. However, you need some pretty specialized domain knowledge, and you'll be competing against Schlumberger and Halliburton. That's great for technical superiority, but you'll probably have difficulty breaking into Halliburton's old-boy network.

Biotech in the US happens either in Boston or the Bay Area and to a lesser extent in the DC/MD/NOVA hub. I have heard that Boston is more an old boy network and that the Bay Area biotech start ups are more receptive to hiring younger people (not MD or PhD) as early employees. For starting your own biotech company, it will be very difficult to garnish credibility without a terminal degree or board of big name collaborators.

A good approach to starting a business in this space is to pick your target audience, and find out if your team can easily fix any of their biggest problems. If not, iterate to a different target audience until you find a good problem for your team.

In the medical device realm, I know of a couple groups of undergrads that have developed technologies that attracted VC attention. Titles and credentials are not deal breaking obstacles.

> hell, people often don't even care who the top filmmaker in New York is, and quite a lot of films get made out of New York.

Picking nits, I would say that Woody Allen has a claim at that title, and is not exactly a lightweight in the film industry.

I thought so too, but apparently not so much:

"As his star waned and box office numbers dwindled, U.S. studios began to demand more control over casting and other major decisions."

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/FilmFest/article/256029

So what do you all think are the best, high-growth sub-industries within the current software technology world?

Defense, Homeland Security, and Intelligence contracting and product development are huge growth markets. But that's probably not what you have in mind.

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