Today there’s nothing like a real safe job. All companies lay off people from time to time.
The difference between a job that pays a fixed salary already vs. a startup that may pay dividends or something i n the future if it does not fold is fairly big.
More in the direction of expertise than job. Do you know any SAP consultants? They can always find a job. I am not exactly that but in a similar industry. They cannot be outsourced to India because they need local knowledge like accounting rules and such software are so huge and the space of potential kinds of problems and industry practices and whatnots, also domain experiences is so big that in these types of industry experience never has a point of diminishing marginal returns. People who do it for 30 years are more valuable than people who do it for 15.
Abandoning that kind of investment to become yet another dreamy startup Ruby on Rails type of guy? They are a dime a dozen and young hotshots with 5 years of experience—because there is just not so much to learn—outdo the older ones. It is an up or out—you hit big and then become a Paul Graham and retire from programming into investorship or similar stuff, or you are sooner or later forced out. In that type of world there is no real equivalent of the 50 years old SAP logistics consultants who is seen as something sort of a doyen because he dealt with every kind of crap that happen in a project at a logistics company.
So it sounds really dangerous to abandon that kind of investment for a new start in something different.
But diversifying, using free time to contribute to a project, that could be smart—hedging bets, if the main industry (desktop business software based on domain knowledge and business process experience) somehow collapses then it makes easier to join a different one (cool hot modern web based stuff). That makes sense, getting a foot in in one’s free time in a different industry..
Working at a job that you like is very useful. It’s beneficial for the child to be around a dad who likes his job instead of a dad who hates his job.
The difference between a job that pays a fixed salary already vs. a startup that may pay dividends or something i n the future if it does not fold is fairly big.
More in the direction of expertise than job. Do you know any SAP consultants? They can always find a job. I am not exactly that but in a similar industry. They cannot be outsourced to India because they need local knowledge like accounting rules and such software are so huge and the space of potential kinds of problems and industry practices and whatnots, also domain experiences is so big that in these types of industry experience never has a point of diminishing marginal returns. People who do it for 30 years are more valuable than people who do it for 15.
Abandoning that kind of investment to become yet another dreamy startup Ruby on Rails type of guy? They are a dime a dozen and young hotshots with 5 years of experience—because there is just not so much to learn—outdo the older ones. It is an up or out—you hit big and then become a Paul Graham and retire from programming into investorship or similar stuff, or you are sooner or later forced out. In that type of world there is no real equivalent of the 50 years old SAP logistics consultants who is seen as something sort of a doyen because he dealt with every kind of crap that happen in a project at a logistics company.
So it sounds really dangerous to abandon that kind of investment for a new start in something different.
But diversifying, using free time to contribute to a project, that could be smart—hedging bets, if the main industry (desktop business software based on domain knowledge and business process experience) somehow collapses then it makes easier to join a different one (cool hot modern web based stuff). That makes sense, getting a foot in in one’s free time in a different industry..
Yes, if not for the risks.