msort

Software engineers surely can make more or less in Financial Industries.

Please read my original comment, which was comparing Google with other software companies.

After last year's 10% rise and bonus-structure change, Google's salary is very high now. Counting salary and bonus, not counting equity-grant, Google perhaps pays the highest in the software industry now.

If counting cash + equity, adjusting for risk, only a few companies (FB etc.) now can beat Google in terms of expected income.

So if your only concern is money, you can still try to see how Google could offer.

A good read about the last internet bubble and Commerce One.

Coding questions are often not the toughest interview questions.

Tough questions could be some "soft" non-coding questions like: design questions (how to design a class hierarchy for a blog), behaviour questions (if your boss is wrong, what to do?), experience questions (why did you use tool X in your previous project Y? I think tool Z is better.)

Those questions are tough because your performance on those questions are very subjective. It depends highly on if the interviewer likes you or not.

Coding questions can be tough, but they are much more objective. Google's engineering interview mostly asks coding questions. Questions can be difficult, but at least, if you write great code, you will pass the interview.

In this sense, Google is not a very tough company for job interview.

In general, the degree of interview toughness depends on the job supply/demand ratio. When many people apply for positions at company X, the company has to apply a high-rejection rate, based on whatever (sometime very random) criteria.

To continue coding in your spare time, you must have a real exciting project to work on: to learn a new technology, or to build something you really love. Without that passion, you won't have the extra energy to do that and it won't necessary to be beneficial.

So try follow your passion. If your passion is to write a novel, play guitar, do that. If your passion is to build a new web app, do that. Don't code just for the sake of coding. You cannot lie to yourself.

Great writing.

One issue with "Forward exercise" tough: by forward-exercising and converting to "Restricted Stock Unit", you avoid the high tax risk, but you also need to pay a substantial amount of cash in advance and bet on the future value of the company. Let's say you get $10k options at strike price $20, you basically need to pay $200K in advance to forward exercise. If the company dies in the future without anexit, you basically lose your $200k.

So perhaps the best strategy is to: 1) Forward exercise in several batches as you are gaining confidence of the company (but before the world has much confidence of the company...yet), and try to exercise before the next valuation increase.

2) Delay exercise as late as possible (closer to exit or IPO). But this usually works only if you join a late-stage startup, whose fate is more predictable.

If you are a startup, try issue Restricted Stock Units, rather than Stock Options to poor and hard-working employees. That will make your company more employee-friendly.

If you are looking for a startup to join, prefer those who issue Stock Units (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, which are not necessarily startups anymore though).

A excellent idea executed beautifully matters.

Perhaps startups should spend much time experimenting with, pivoting with, possible ideas before focusing on one single idea 100%.

Searching for the beautiful idea using a breadth-first rather than a depth-first approach.

The highest-paid programmers usually become rich via: 1) Founding a business or startup. 2) Becoming an early employee of an averagely successful startup, or a per-IPO employee of hugely successful startups (Facebook, Google). 3) Becoming an IT manager or quants/traders at IB or Hedge funds 4) Becoming world-leader in open-source technologies (e.g. Scala, Hadoop, JQuery). 5) Writing books, giving lectures: teaching others how to become great programmers.

Good example to show every area of Internet needs innovation.

Bookmarking is as old as the first web browser. It's great that a great team is trying to save communities and innovate in this area.

www.glassdoor.com also has many salary data for many companies.

For example: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Twitter-Salaries-E100569.htm

The stories of Google, Facebook, and Twitter show that VC has values. We want more investments to start-ups, rather than the opposite. Let the market decide itself: the money will flow where the value is, eventually. I think success is hard either way: faming or mining, it is better than not trying.

I really wish Larry read news.ycombinator.com.

This article argues for potential. But for Twitter to be as high-valued as Facebook, it has to prove it can be adopted by average internet users. Twitter has such a potential, yet Facebook has already been achieved that.

When I recommend Twitter to my friends, it usually goes like this:

Me: Try Twitter, it is interesting. Friend: What can you get from it? Me: a lot of interesting updates from your favorite people and topics Friend: I already have enough internet updates. I shall pass...

The point is that average user only has several web sites on their minds. There much be a good reason for them to use one more web site.

Here is an idea: an eBay like site to link buyers and sellers in real-time.

One simple way to implement: Twitter hashtag #buyitnow

Leave a job when and only when you want to.

Leave or stay a job, cherish your time and make everyday as interesting and satisfying as possible.

Two major difference of a trading firm from a software firm: 1) Large amount of trading capital is needed to make a sizable profit. 2) Math, finance and trading skills.

A trading firm needs above 2 items in addition to technical skills to succeed. A team of good people with all 3 above items (capital, trading, tech) have a good chance to succeed.

In fact, Citadel (one of the largest quant hedge funds) was started by one person (Ken Griffin) when he was a undergraduate from a Harvard dormitory. It is pretty much a startup success story.

There is a major culture difference: trading is the key activity; coding is only secondary. This may explain why trading firms usually have a typical wall-street tough culture, and don't feel like a typical silicon-valley startup.

Just like a technical firm needs to iterate on the products and infrastructures. A trading firm needs to iterate on the algorithms and infrastructures to stay competitive.

Market changes constantly. Many trading algorithms are essentially market-data driven and need to adapt to the market or lose.

This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds.

I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.

Maybe someone will start to make an open-source Twitter alternative.

My suggestion:

if (there is a very promising good startup offer): take it else: work on your side project until it takes off as a real startup

Thanks!

It works. The problem with this bot is that it shows the original URL submitted, but not the HN URL, which includes the interesting and valuable comments.

Google is hiring software engineers in engineering offices around the world: Mountain View, Seattle, New York City, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, Waterloo, Zurich...

See: http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/swe/index.html

Possible solutions:

1) Join a good big company like Google where experience is not disrespected. It is natural for startups to prefer good and cheap young engineers.

2) Face the reality, develop and respect soft (management, talk, people, emotion) skills besides pure coding skills. It is a fantasy that coding skill is superior to other skills. Everything is engineering: your job is solving-problems, not mere coding.

3) Start your own company and work hard on it at least once in your career. If it fails, you learn valuable skills other engineers cannot compete.

4) Beat the average. Going extra miles to become better every year (if not every day). You will be surprised how far you can go. Most average engineers will never go outside their comfort zones, thus peaked after 5 years into the career path. It means: contributing to an open-source project; writing a blog; creating several web applications; Learning new skills (Machine Learning, Web Design).

Those tips for joining startups seems to be interesting:

"For your first startup:

You want a place with >10 folks but less than 200. I say this under the theory that you are mostly working there to find challenging work and smart people. A startup with >200 people is too close to becoming a big company (or a failure) soon.

Be very strong in your field, if you are not yet that good practice until you are. Try to work on the hardest projects you can find at your current employer.

You will probably not get rich at your first startup, but you will learn at least 3x more per week than you would at a big company. Don't obsess too much on how many options etc... - it really doesn't matter - you are mostly going there to do good work, learn and find folks who will make successful startups."

I know several people who have made FU money (several millions). From my observations, their lives are not much different from the rest of us.

Who a person marries, how fulfilling the days (work or non-work) are seems to matter more than pure amount of money.

Time is limited and never enough. Money is not.

I still don't understand why Twitter has not lifted the 140-char limit.

Posterous, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook all allow unlimited status update, along with pictures, links, videos posting.

I'd love to see when Twitter can change.

Because the direct route is not easy, or even possible for most people.

We are human being living in a commercial society. Money is essential for us to survive. And for most people, a modest level of success is essential for happiness.

I think the right approach is to strike for goals which have dual rewards: material and spiritual. Do things you love. If money doesn't come, also do things bringing in money.

How about the 3rd universal factor: growing too big too soon?

Focus on improving your engineering skills; Switch to a much more interesting day job; Make your life more interesting; Developing your product in moonlight (Reference: read book Ignore Everyone).

Or just choose to give up the green card for something which matters more to you.

Being smart doesn't necessarily mean cannot getting things done.

The author never worked at Google. It seems not so reasonable to project her experience at one Microsoft group to Google.