Or you were chronically underpaid and didn't realize it. Or you were the victim of circumstances beyond your control that resulted in abnormal financial burdens. Or any of innumerable reasons someone's life can simply not go perfectly.
The idea that getting a job, keeping it, and living responsibly necessarily result in sufficient savings and assets for retirement is pretty widespread and deeply flawed. Life just is not that simple, and there are plenty of ways to end up screwed (in varying degrees) without having done anything particularly irresponsible or stupid that would warrant it.
You don't even need to be the victim of unforeseen circumstances. Just having kids makes it much harder to save money. Your expenses for food, clothing, housing, energy, healthcare, etc. go way up, and if both parents work, they're paying for daycare when the children are young. Which means it's much harder to invest a significant fraction of your income.
Either you don't quite understand the purpose of a non-compete or there's an entire class of them I'm not aware of (which is entirely possible), but in my experience, their purpose is to explicitly bar employees from poaching customers from the business.
Working on something in your personal time that's similar to what you're working on for your employer -- unless your employment contract is entirely unreasonable -- isn't and shouldn't be a violation unless you are using company resources (including but not limited to trade secrets learned in the context of your employment and not legally available through other sources).
Non-compete is a somewhat generalized term being used here, but it can mean what you referenced ("don't poach customers") as well as "don't steal our product ideas". These are sometimes called NDA or PIIA (1) which might be better representations of what we are talking about here. In this case, the company is claiming that he stole their code (an 'invention' or 'property' of the company) for the benefit of some other party.
NDA or PIIA agreements are common in software development.
This is a matter of non-compete agreements, signed by private parties. Personally, I think it's totally reasonable to ask employees not to work on competing products in their off-time. As an employee, I have signed such agreements myself. The author appears to have signed such an agreement.
We can disagree about this. You, personally, are free not to sign these agreements with your employer, because you feel the request is unreasonable.
Non-competes, as applied to tech workers in Massachusetts, essentially say from start, to two years after you quit your job, you will NOT work on anything similar, for anybody. (Depending on the contract you signed.)
(Current Governor of Mass is looking to change this.)
It IS a violation in many places and it should be IMO. See my reply above.
I'll try to dig up some relevant links to laws
Here's a relevant link.
"Employees Owe a Duty of Loyalty to Their Employers
...
Thus, an employee who improperly competes with his employer, assists a competitor during the course of employment, or makes use of the employer's confidential information to compete with the employer after termination may have breached the duty of loyalty.
This was apparently (anecdotally) the case a while ago, but I've never seen a single employment contract that included a clause like this. I don't know whether it's just FUD, whether it's not as common as it was in the 80's or early 90's, or whether this is another case of Silicon Valley being a poor place to work in tech (or the midwest being a good one), but this is not universally common.
> This was apparently (anecdotally) the case a while ago, but I've never seen a single employment contract that included a clause like this
It is in pretty much every tech company's employment contract in the US regardless of size. I've seen this in Georgia, New York, Texas, Washington, and California. If it's a Fortune 1000 company, they're going to have. If it's a startup, they're probably going to have it. A lot of people just aren't aware of it because they don't tend to read their 10+ page employment contracts full of headache inducing, legalese.
> I don't know whether it's just FUD, whether it's not as common as it was in the 80's or early 90's
It is not FUD, and it's a lot more common than it was before the 90s.
How did this get super popular? Someone can correct me, but it starts with Apple in the 90s. Hotmail was actually developed by an Apple employee during his off time. Well MS buys it and Apple gets nothing. Why? It's probably because they didn't have this clause or a more aggressive and broad version of it like what we have today. Apple really is a trend setter.
Anyways the legal clause is basically ridiculous, since the general legal strategy is to be aggressive early on. In layman's terms ANYTHING you come up with, at ANYTIME during your employment either on company time or your own personal time, and ANYWHERE either in the office or in your own home, belongs to your employer regardless of your employer's industry.
What mortifies me is 1. how prevalent this is, and 2. how ignorant everyone is of its existence.
> It is in pretty much every tech company's employment contract in the US regardless of size.
If you couple that with an expectation in certain programming circles that you should do programming as a hobby as well as a job, you've got the nice effect of working 40 hours a week for your employer, + all the hours that you spend on programming in your free time for your employer, as in 'they'll cash in if it is succesful'. So like a little speculative, cost free investment for the company.
The only way that I can reconcile this with the modern off-work github coding is that the programmers don't keep this in the back of their minds, and that whatever big fall outs of this have been relatively isolated.
(obviously I am only talking about side projects that could potentially have some value, not the 'implement pac man in brainfuck' for the pain, I mean for educational purposes, type of projects)
Somehow you've decided that, despite labeling yourself unsuccessful, people should pay attention to what you say. The only support I see you making for this is citing your IQ, which is meaningless.
You obviously believe you're telling people things that work, and the attempt to help is something I'm sure people appreciate. But based on what you're saying here, either you don't follow that advice, you don't understand it well enough to apply it correctly, or you do apply it correctly it's actually bad advice. So unless you're learning from what successful people have done (not just said), you're offering unproven advice, and even if you are, you're offering advice you don't seem to understand.
I've had a lot of terrible luck. Some of it was no one's fault, most of it was not my fault. I'll probably be a lot more successful now that I have my shit together. But when things go bad for you, you learn what people really are in a way that the ones with charmed lives never really do.
I suppose I'm lucky insofar as I had my bad luck in my 20s, when it was easier to recover than in one's 50s.
Much knowledge can only be gained through misery and suffering. Since humans are mostly defective, it's rare that a person who hasn't suffered, been betrayed, etc. knows how people actually work.
Additionally, understanding how human organizations work is no substitute for real-time footwork. Ideally, one wants both. I have a wealth of the first (and, unlike Welch, I'm willing to share what I know) but (unlike your garden variety corporate psychopath) I'm not good enough at reading people to develop that "snake sense" for others' weaknesses. In the field, that's also very valuable, and it's something I never developed.
To be fair, your idea of "terrible" luck basically means "having to switch jobs several times and making less than $250,000 as a 30 year old".
I mean, I get it: There are plenty of people who are less deserving than you that have been wildly, disproportionately successful. I can understand why you're envious. But don't kid yourself, most people would kill to have the supposedly miserable failure of a career that you've had.
your idea of "terrible" luck basically means "having to switch jobs several times and making less than $250,000 as a 30 year old".
Nah, that's not what it's about at all. It's definitely not about the salary. If you're a novelist and you make even a quarter of that number at mid-career, you're a huge success.
It's about autonomy, importance, reputation, etc. Personal financial stress (which I have suffered, although most of that was because I picked a bad startup, thus my fault) is toxic sludge, but the difference between comfortable and rich means zilch. What does matter is control over one's destiny, rather than being blown about by others' political games, and having the resources to implement one's own ideas rather than being a tool in someone else's box.
Software used to have an R&D flavor, but we've let ourselves become a colonized, defeated tribe. As a consequence, we have to deal with closed allocation, project management bullshit ("story points") and constant political intrusions on the ability to do our work properly.
I've realized (perhaps too late) that it's not my fault, because no one really has that authority based on technical ability alone. One really does have to suck it up and play politics. As I get older, I realize that my negative experiences are ridiculously common. Most people hide away in shame when bad things happen to them in their careers. I won't. To protect the good, I come out, throw down and fight.
I can understand why you're envious.
Envy != resentment. I'm not a very envious person, but I take pride in resenting those with undeserved success. They get into power, make bad decisions, and it's almost impossible to flush them out. They're a cancer. I'm the chemo.
Envy is wishing one had another's unfair or undeserved advantage. Resentment is pushing toward fairness. You're not trying to grab that coveted token or advantage for yourself (that would be envy) but you're trying to expose its stupidity and render it meaningless. Envy is an emotion; resentment is an attitude and somewhat of a social strategy.
My emotions toward the Evan Spiegels and Lucas Duplans of the world (I don't feel much either way for them, to be honest) are irrelevant. What is relevant is that they make good anecdotes, and when they embarrass themselves they can be cast in such a way that they take down other, much more important, targets. Does Lucas Duplan deserve to be ridiculed more (or less) than any other young douchebag? Not really. Should we mock him mercilessly if it casts aspersion on the chickenhawks who backed him? Yes, absolutely.
Seems like you might be living in a bubble. Guess what - you don't have to have won the startup lottery to have personal autonomy, be financially independent or build a strong reputation.
Your reasoning is this:
I am extremely clever and I have a certificate to prove it!
I have chosen an extremely lucrative career.
Why don't people see how important I am? Where is my respect?
And then you say things like "I take pride in resenting those with undeserved success", "They're a cancer. I'm the chemo." and "most of [my failures were] not my fault".
Do you think statements like this foster respect for you?
I understand you, I had some experiences when I had to continuously facepalm when dealing with politics, ideas that had a strong push due to nepotism and cronyism, threatening somebody's power by presenting and executing superior non-trivial ideas in a very short time that became the base of the whole operations etc. In the end I decided I don't want to waste my life working for people propagating this way of working and had to completely overhaul my strategy.
I can give you a few advices (with your intelligence you are aware of them anyway though might not have been acting on them so far):
1) start your own business(es) that can be automated to a large extent. You'd spend 1 hour a day running it, making adjustments and in time it would grow to sustain you 100%. There are still a plenty of areas you can focus at, you might have avoided them because they are "easy", or "anyone could do that", "uninteresting" etc. Yet they give you a recurring income that would give you freedom to pursue whatever you want to do.
2) accept (and give) only partnerships when working with someone, on fair terms
3) do a reasonable long-term investing, 80% "stable", 20% risky or whatever reasonable ratio suits you
4) when forced to work on something due to economical circumstances, sudden change of directions due to acquisition etc. with which you can't agree, stop using your emotions there and do the average expected work, while preserving energy and attention to your future opportunities
5) retain your integrity. Compromising yourself weakens you immensely
6) make sure you are on top of your game all the time - get excellent at chosen difficult MOOCs, do some new thing with an utmost focus (arts?), anything where you can get a real feedback about your capabilities and progress
You should understand you hold enormous power even as an individual. Perhaps because of your past generosity or good will you didn't use it or were led to believe that you can't do a lot of things - I think your subconsciousness is rebelling to such thoughts, hence the strong reactions you have. You can literally bring whole companies to the ground if you wish to, or create something unique that empowers others in a good way. Most people become mediocre, uninspiring, "happiness" pursuers, take some kind of blue pill, yet still thinking they have the best ideas, are brilliant, master minds etc. They will never understand what is going on once you start utilizing your mind to improve some small part of life for everyone.
It's about autonomy, importance, reputation, etc. [..] the difference between comfortable and rich means zilch. What does matter is control over one's destiny, rather than being blown about by others' political games, and having the resources to implement one's own ideas rather than being a tool in someone else's box.
Why is that your definition of success?
"Having the resources to implement my own ideas" is daft; I very likely don't have any (new) ideas worth implementing. How many people have lived since the early days of the industrial revolution? Call it 20 billion[1]. How many genuinely useful not too niche machines have been invented and programs written, not counting the same program reinvented over and over and over. Tens of thousands? A million? There just aren't enough new things for everyone to invent.
So instead of new ideas, maybe I/we could reimplement existing ideas - do something that someone else has done, in our own way. But how is that significantly different from "being a tool in someone else's box"?
Elon Musk makes cars, he's got control over his own destiny! He's following his dream! He's not a tool in someone else's box, he's not pushed around by others political games! That's success!
Wait, he's not pushed around by others' political games? Tesla cars have to meet all kinds of regulations. Tesla the company does too, for accounting, finance, taxes, advertising, customer interaction, etc.
The cars have to have pedals and a steering wheel or no customer would be able to drive them. They have to fit on a road, and behave in common car-like ways or no customer would have use for them. They have to look like a car or no customer would recognise what they are or wouldn't want to be seen with one. They have to be petrol, diesel or battery powered because there isn't anything else they could be that fits all the lots-of-requirements.
And yet you say "It's not money that makes Elon Musk a success, it's because he has the freeodm to shape the doors his way!".
But he doesn't have the freedom to shape them his way, he has the freedom to shape them like car doors and nothing else.
A false sense of freedom is a strange definition of success.
You could find as much limited freedom while working for someone else.
You're willfully missing the point and your example illustrates it. The Tesla X has an extremely unique door design for the rear passengers. Certainly it has to conform to some requirements. Even if only to satisfy the definition of the word door. That it also has to adhere to regulations and consumer demands is irrelevant. Elon Musk had a relatively large degree of freedom, compared to many engineers at top-down car companies, in deciding how to meet those demands. You can assert that neither Elon Musk nor the engineers are entirely free. You could also observe that they exist on opposing ends of a continuum.
I've also learned a lot of things the hard way. You learn more from failure than from success.
After having worked awhile, I'm pretty sure I'm able to tell the difference between people who really know what they're doing and people who are faking it. I've never been in a position to make hiring decisions, so I haven't had a chance to use that skill.
Maybe its the best we can expect of a corporation.
Corporations don't make decisions; they don't do anything at all. The people who control them do. "A corporation" isn't even a single abstraction; there are so many different kinds and even the same kind can be set up and run so many different ways that having any expectation (or lack thereof) of "a corporation" is meaningless.
A good result from bad intentions isn't admirable. A war economy can create jobs, among other things, but that result doesn't make going to war an admirable decision.
Corporations don't make decisions; they don't do anything at all.
Nitpick - corporate leadership is responsible for the actions of those they lead.
Everyone knows what we're talking about when someone says "Microsoft did this" or "Y Combinator did that". It's a convenient shorthand that omits no useful information.
Nobody cares about the difference between an LLC and an S Corp and a Nonprofit when discussing corporate behavior (or lack thereof!) - their collective actions can and should still be critically evaluated through the same rubric.
>Corporations don't make decisions; they don't do anything at all. The people who control them do.
The people that take those decisions are many and have various roles. The aggregate of them, we call a "corporation".
Think of it like an emergent entity. It's not just a person (e.g the CEO) making a decision all by himself. It's the whole leadership, the Board of directors, shareholders, the financial and market condition of the company, it's history etc.
In your logic, people don't take decisions and don't do anything either. Their brain does.
It's certainly interesting to read this sort of reflection. The author discusses Jobs' mannerisms without either worshiping or demonizing him, which is refreshing.
This strikes me as the same sort of statistical non-information that people strive to come up with during sports games (at least in the US). "Mr. X is the first person in 17 years to bat Y% during years modulo Z while facing right-handed pitchers with only four fingers on their left hands!"
It's annoying but some people like bumps in the road.
You apparently tried to build a prototype with a framework that very explicitly tries to provide more than just prototype capabilities. Invoking "one mans trash anothers treasure [big sic]" and then citing this is ridiculous; your failure to choose the right tool for your chosen task does not reflect poorly on the tool, nor does it suggest people who do use it correctly "like bumps in the road."
I guess I wasn't clear and just letting out a bit of steam. Still doing it but to be clearer... Go feels more like a framework than a language. could be by design, but didn't expect it. also you are right, "bumps the road" is not fare. Better would be to say, in referring to myself, i guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks ;)
The idea that getting a job, keeping it, and living responsibly necessarily result in sufficient savings and assets for retirement is pretty widespread and deeply flawed. Life just is not that simple, and there are plenty of ways to end up screwed (in varying degrees) without having done anything particularly irresponsible or stupid that would warrant it.