Don’t call yourself a programmer:
“Programmer” sounds like “anomalously high-cost peon who types some
mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo.” If you call yourself a
programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. You
know Salesforce, widely perceived among engineers to be a Software as a
Services company? Their motto and sales point is “No Software”, which
conveys to their actual customers “You know those programmers you have
working on your internal systems? If you used Salesforce, you could fire
half of them and pocket part of the difference in your bonus.” (There’s
nothing wrong with this, by the way. You’re in the business of
unemploying people. If you think that is unfair, go back to school and
study something that doesn’t matter.)
Instead, describe yourself by what you have accomplished for previously employers vis-a-vis increasing revenues or reducing costs. If you have not had the opportunity to do this yet, describe things which suggest you have the ability to increase revenue or reduce costs, or ideas to do so.
There are many varieties of well-paid professionals who sling code but do not describe themselves as slinging code for a living. Quants on Wall Street are the first and best-known example: they use computers and math as a lever to make high-consequence decisions better and faster than an unaided human could, and the punchline to those decisions is “our firm make billions of dollars.” Successful quants make more in bonuses in a good year than many equivalently talented engineers will earn in a decade or lifetime.
Similarly, even though you might think Google sounds like a programmer-friendly company, there are programmers and then there’s the people who are closely tied to 1% improvements in AdWords click-through rates. (Hint: provably worth billions of dollars.) I recently stumbled across a web-page from the guy whose professional bio is “wrote the backend billing code that 97% of Google’s revenue passes through.” He’s now an angel investor (a polite synonym for “rich”).
Read Complete Article Here :- http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
Instead, describe yourself by what you have accomplished for previously employers vis-a-vis increasing revenues or reducing costs. If you have not had the opportunity to do this yet, describe things which suggest you have the ability to increase revenue or reduce costs, or ideas to do so.
There are many varieties of well-paid professionals who sling code but do not describe themselves as slinging code for a living. Quants on Wall Street are the first and best-known example: they use computers and math as a lever to make high-consequence decisions better and faster than an unaided human could, and the punchline to those decisions is “our firm make billions of dollars.” Successful quants make more in bonuses in a good year than many equivalently talented engineers will earn in a decade or lifetime.
Similarly, even though you might think Google sounds like a programmer-friendly company, there are programmers and then there’s the people who are closely tied to 1% improvements in AdWords click-through rates. (Hint: provably worth billions of dollars.) I recently stumbled across a web-page from the guy whose professional bio is “wrote the backend billing code that 97% of Google’s revenue passes through.” He’s now an angel investor (a polite synonym for “rich”).
Read Complete Article Here :- http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
0 comments :
Post a Comment