Ask HN: Which role in software engineering is the best for average person?
1. Frontend Engineer
2. Backend Engineer
3. Applied Research Engineer
4. Research Engineer
5. Graphics Engineer
6. Game developer
7. Enterprise SE
8. Fintech Engineer (esp. in trading/algos)
9. Cloud Engineer
10. DevOps
11. System Engineer (compiler, os, browser)
12. Consumer Application Engineer (macos/linux/windows)
13. Machine Learning Engineer
14. Data Engineer
It’s always good to be best. I got told best ML engineer would earn a lot compared to best Frontend Engineer. (ofc, it might be wrong). But which role is good to be average at?
It would also be awesome to know barrier of entry vs reward. For example entering graphics engineering is extremely hard and reward is also average compared to average frontend roles. Once the profile is built up, the former will be a great deal because the investment pays off!
So, what are your opinions? Any idea?
70 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 411 ms ] threadThe rat-race is tiring. I have given up on it even before starting. The hardest thing in life is giving up. It took a long self talk to reach an agreement where I am truly an average in what I do.
There are so many people out there, who can do marvelous things. Meanwhile I am just an average dude trying to make a comfortable life.
I want to minimize my effort and maximize the reward. This is the motivation of asking this question. Not everyone can be good at things, there are so many factors.
I sometimes think I should have studied medicine because an average doctor has it better than an average engineer. It was foolish of me to follow a dream that was never supposed to be made for me.
Front end had you chasing frameworks. Front end for you own projects is OK but for a company get ready to learn the latest React nonsense while supporting Angular, JQuery Plugins and everything else that was in vogue over the life of your codebase. Unless you join a disciplined team that doesn’t chase fads or rewrites everything each time.
Game dev is famous for bad work life balance. Not sure about pay? Working for Roblox is probably decent?
The best paid will be FAANG (USA only) or Fintech esp. Trading.
For career development if I had time again I might go more into sales engineer, with the option to into pure sales or start a business with the help of all those friends you made! Or be a business analyst for a year or two.
Inside the Engineering wheelhouse it feels CTO is the real career progression and if you don’t want to be on that path it is harder to find career opportunities.
My question, is there no way to be eternally stuck as "senior/staff engineer". I do not want anything beyond that. The salary of an average senior/staff engineer is always greater than median salary of the country.
That should solve all the living expenses.
Living expenses may or may not be constant. If you have a family expect them to increase alot while having less time to keep up with tech.
Frontend devs get to waste so much time chasing frameworks and fads, and never seem to be held accountable for a functional product that works well. Form state and error handling are afterthoughts compared to animations and drop shadows.
But more than that, a lot of concerns are the same no matter what framework you use. Making an app accessible in React isn't that different from doing it in any other framework. Browser APIs don't really change. Switching frameworks just means switching mental models for how you store and pass around data, but it doesn't fundamentally change the job. And the great thing about the popular frameworks is that once you internalize how they work, they can really speed up the way you work.
I've worked with barely average developers and believe me, they frustrate the rest of the team. They'll copy-and-paste the same code 5x instead of asking where they should put a new module. They'll commit untested code into main, and leave it to the next guy to clean it up, just so they can close their ticket. Communication is often poor. We all don't know things. The problem with "average" is they don't ask questions.
At least I would try to communicate on important decisions. However, I have zero interest in making decisions, making presentation, trying to prove things or any of that. All I want is a task that is achievable in given allocated time and fits my skill level.
I have given up on hopes of learning. There is no such thing as learning after highschool. It's always one thing after another. College is chasing grades. Post graduate chasing papers. Never got a true chance to dive and learn. There is no room for failure. All I had to do was put of patch work to clear the subjects. How can I expect myself to be good when I have cheated the system throughout my life.
Hence, if I get the chance, I would love to be average. No responsibility. Slightly better pay. I feel I can study what interest me just to crush my own ego.
Hope it makes sense.
The talent at top are polite enough to see the difference. Your arrogance reminds me of some egoist friend.
> I have given up on hopes of learning. There is no such thing as learning after highschool.
This is refusing to learn at an industry where continually learning is one of the most important things you need to do. You're actively choosing to be bad at your job.
I don't want to go home and learn more about the things so that I can do the job better. There is literally no incentive in doing it better than just doing it alright.
I would rather learn things from diverse topics and interests that will benefit that I can enjoy in the long run.
I don't know what to say. For example, I recently designed some webpage or made some prototype app using X framework in Y language. Do you consider that I learnt something?
I don't know, I feel like that isn't learning. I just made the thing work because I read some stuff, processed information and did some hit and trial.
Compared that to something like "ah hah!" moments; those are extremely rare at work. It only happens at debugging. The reason why I am stating it is because I have forgotten a lot of these things. What stuck with me are the basics and foundations and it took years to be reinforced.
I doubt you will find a job where you get to learn in a proper way.
I run into "average" developers who won't even look for an answer. They don't realize their problem has probably been solved many, many times before. They'll attempt to reinvent the wheel instead of using a proven solution like an existing library. They'll literally stare at an error message, not paste it into Google, then tell the team they're "blocked" a couple days later. How about asking someone?
What is the "proper way" of learning to you? Do you want to be taught in a classroom?
That just sucks. And that is the average? I have really skewed view of average then! Because I think of myself as average and I don't do any of those stuffs. I am actively seeking solutions and methods. If I had to write from scratch, I would only do when there is hard requirement and a proper reference exists. Without proper reference it would be a nightmare!
> What is the "proper way" of learning to you? Do you want to be taught in a classroom?
I never believed in learning at the classroom. It never worked for me as I got bored and tired. Sometimes when I was stuck, classroom helped but most of the time I couldn't focus.
For me proper learning requires immersion and building intuition. There is factual learning where I just take facts for granted. Then there is building intuition and understanding why the facts are like so. If I can follow these patterns, I reach a state where I will have solid high level intuition of a topic and I call myself to be learned. Once I am at that stage, I can create and think of new ideas/triggers ultimately allowing me to see patterns of possibilities. When I don't reach there, I don't feel I have done my work on learning.
It takes a lot, and genuinely a lot of time to reach that state of mind. And even if you reach there, it is under constant threat of being overwritten by other memories. However, once you have a baseline, you can easily remember more facts and how to do things.
I hope it makes sense!
Just the single statement alone "There is no such thing as learning after highschool" is quite literally one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Start with that one... contemplate how........ absolutely, and utterly, incorrect that statement is. If you disagree, then start to pick apart your reasons for disagreeing, analyze how others outside yourself seem to be doing it and you are not. Stop lying to yourself.
And most of all, raise your goal posts above being as mediocre as possible, jesus christ.
Contemplate, even further, how ridiculous it is that you think its only possible to enjoy yourself if you have no responsibility and are a mediocre piss-ant. I can't even type this without feeling physical pain at your views. I hope you are 18 years old or something, and these things will sort them self out for you later in life.
Then you stick to the idea of calling me a loser from your point of view. I don't know what you are trying to prove but I was just asking a question on a way to genuinely get by in life.
We do not live in the same world. So what rule applies to you doesn't apply to me. Yet still I asked this question because being an average has a statistically better chance (as the law of large numbers holds). I wanted to get a realistic view of average people and what they do. If you look at other comments of mine, I am not against learning. I am against the definition of learning which is phony. It is one thing to know something, and it is a different thing to learn. I have seen many so-called learned ones struggle with the applications of their knowledge. At that point, how do you know if the person has actually learnt anything? People can grow beyond their limits. There is multiple dimension in life. And learning doesn't necessarily mean always learning the next hype stuff or yada yada. That is practically useless.
I humbly request you to point out the number of situations in your life where you applied second-order partial differential equations to solve anything that you are doing. (If that rings a bell, that is.) Or heck even used some esoteric algorithms to improve some heuristics. Bet you still use the fundamentals you learned in college and apply them. Did you ever truly learn new things? Are you apt to catch up on all the buzz that is going on in the AI, dissect everything and teach to a high school graduate? Can you learn the graphics and say implement Gaussian splatting on your own system? Or even write your own transpiler to do something? I do not know your background. I do not understand why you are so offended here to think that I am a brainless person who burts or whines without thinking.
There are multiple thoughts and stages of thoughts before admitting something. You make it sound like I never tried. Trust me, I have. I have done more than you. It sucks to be blocked when I can't show any physical result of learning because of limitations from financial stuff. Then if someone would fund, there is a lack of confidence. The guilt that I may expend their resources over nothing.
The only reason I want to be average is because I know I am slightly above average say (51%). It is just easy for me down there to work in an average way. It is more relaxing. I don't have to challenge myself or pull out my hair. Then eventually I hope to find something else in life.
We have a different perspective on life. You think in your own way, to rise above mediocrity. I think of embracing it. I just want to know what are the options so that I can make some life choices.
I regret choosing a hard path in life. It never gave me anything. Now I want to stop pursuing it. Stop spinning in the wheel.
First of all, YOU are not a loser, but your viewpoints are. That is a large difference, as at ANY point you can have a moment of introspection to change your mind and beliefs, to be better. That's one of the greatest things about life is you can choose to be whatever you want to be, simply by doing it.
Tough love never hurt anyone, I find the best answer is the answer which resonates the truth. I personally don't prefer to be coddled and told "im a good boy" when my work fucking sucks. I want someone to tell me my work fucking sucks. This is the SHORTEST path from A->B (improvement), and if you respect your own time/energy, and care about efficiency, then it makes sense that this is a good approach.
Your third paragraph I don't even understand. Personally I learn for around maybe 1-6 hours per day depending on what I'm doing. Each morning starting at 5am I wake up, make coffee, and spend the entire morning getting in the right headspace learning about vastly different subjects through experiential learning. For example, an app I built recently that is doing well involves a large amount of statistics, and while I learned bayesian stats/linear algebra for a previous project/algorithm, I now have to re-learn a lot of things that I forgot. So I wake up, do that for hours, and I enjoy it, every second of it. All the things I'm learning I utilize in my own work. Another example: Ive spent the last 40 days converting/optimizing my 10+ year vim config to neovim, so for that I had to learn Lua (easy), how neovim works, etc etc. I've spent maybe 100+ hours on that alone over 40 days, ALL of that was learning. I have maybe 50 forum posts/IRC questions where all I did was learn for some purpose. Nowhere in here did i mention "hype stuff". Literally nothing in my day is concerned with hype. The vast amount of my time, 10-15 hours a day is spend coding on any one of my companies, learning all I need to for them (I am a solo developer on all of them with no tech employees).
> I humbly request you to point out the number of situations in your life where you applied second-order partial differential equations to solve anything that you are doing
I once spent over a year developing an ad network bidding optimization algorithm, and while it didn't involve differential equations it did involve a large amount of advanced statistics topics + machine learning topics, in essentially how to perform billions of ad auctions to optimize X with hundreds of input variables. I did that completely alone in my own bedroom. Ad network bidding mechanisms are black boxes because no one wants to expose how their X-priority pricing optimizations work, so I basically had to learn everything myself entirely from scratch, only scraping the bottom of the barrel with multi-year old white papers on ad network optimization. After some time doing this myself, just spending hours and hours each day doing this, I showed my work to the #2 developer at the largest mobile ad network at the time who developed their algorithm, and he told me that he was extremely surprised to see I got that far as a single person in the time I did, and mentioned it took their whole team to come up with something similar in a longer amount of time. And yet....... I didn't go to school for computer science. I literally went to college for the arts. Everything I have ever known is 100% self taught. I've never had mentors, classes, or anything. I dont even REMEMBER the things I learned in high school or college. Regarding graphics... one time I wanted to learn how rendering engines work so I learned all the math behind how to make a spinning 3d cube using different projection matrices etc, and then learned all the math that goes into that, and WHY it works. I'm horrible at math, btw. That took about a week, and I got to make a 3d cube, that had proper lighting etc, simply by just lots and lots of learning and reading. I have a HUGE amount of examples like this,...
1. How do you get the confidence over time? I am sure I can also do what you can but will take me 3x or heck even 4x the effort. So, it feels a bit sad to know by the time I am done, it will be worthless despite enjoying the process.
2. I liked how you admitted you forget things too. So this process of relearning for the nth time, does it make the experience enjoyable? For me, I find it tiring to know that I have to do the same thing over and over and some people just get by. It feels kind of disheartening. And more to it, now it's AI that can do it better.
3. I have tried different things big or small. Did quite a few interesting things but nothing remarkable at all. I like engineering/design and making usable things. However, whatever I do is never enough for "others" while it is really okay for me. Now this is the source of all issues. Once I finish a project, I move on to the next project or venture. There is no introspection from what I built. I just like building but not pushing. Consequently, they do not look impressive because they are just replicas nothing more. I get the illusion that I am learning things, but once I blindfold and try to recreate it, I can't. It is disheartening too.
4. I actually come from a disadvantaged background. English is not my primary language. Thus, I put in extra effort whenever I do something to compensate for the lack of communication. It has helped me. Now not everything can be communicated when there is no remarkable portfolio to show. As you have proven yourself, things take time to build. The problem here is I can't afford the luxury of time because of other aspects of life. I get an hour of free personal time at max.
5. The whole idea of finding an average job was to finish it within 4 hours (because I don't have to put effort) and later use the remaining time for myself. This is the only way in which I believe I can make substantial progress in self-improvement.
6. Answering your final question. I am poor in terms of background, skills, and execution (time management). I can do enough to get by but not enough to impress or get other people interested in me for opportunities. This is why I am direly seeking a position where I can get by and still get a chance to improve. I thought college would give that, but it didn't. I thought a postgraduate would give that, but it didn't. I want something easy because I am genuinely tired.
So, I am not living up to my potential, I am not getting hired because I don't have "experience" for entry-level positions in the field I am interested in. (Idk why it's called entry-level). Consequently, I just want to get through life, find easy tasks, get things done, and then carry on from there.
Ok I found it, start here: https://i.imgur.com/o3xT5Jh.png and then my reply here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161
I have no idea if you are like that or not, but don't cut yourself short thinking it takes 3-4x the effort.
Let me think about your questions throughout the day, as my mind has a lot layers of interconnected fibers, and I want to distil them all down into the most meaningful/impactful statements.
After reading your reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161, it resonated with me because I am this type of learner. I need to break things fast, reach the wrong answer, and get stuck so that I can see examples and learn from them. It is really good at getting what is out there. But being in academia surrounded by people who learn from abstraction and words, I can't get any confidence to speak about myself. It feels like I have seen the other side and now I am constantly evaluating myself with that.
I always thought this way of learning was fake learning because everything relied on intuition and most of the time my intuition was wrong. I had to go back re-read and attempt again. Once I fixed it, I was done with it and next time I had to restart from scratch because to me, it's a completely new situation. This made me feel like I never learnt anything in the past and I was actually someone who cheated the system because I knew exact things to be said in the right way. Like an incantation of a magic spell.
But after reading your reply, I will now dive a bit deeper into this kind of learning and see how it resonates with my internal world and learning! Thanks for sharing it!
> The downside is always when I’m around strong people of the other type I get the sense they don’t respect this style of learning sometimes. It comes through in their words, tone, subtle body language cues.
This is also one source of in-confidence. Everything started with the introduction of LLMs. It just punishes the person like me because I have a unique way of doing things. I claim this because I rapidly process information, try to understand behaviors and execute it. In any case I can't do it, I resort into finding other sources who has done it. I can understand the solution as long as it is written in clear way. It can be research paper, books, equations, code, blog, even just some random discussion as long as it hints into certain direction to trigger a spark. After that I try to use whatever I think is the best.
Simply put, I can give a solution, not just the best one but one to get 80% job done.
2 things:
1) MBTI is most effective when looking at the cognitive functions, NOT just the overall "type" which is more generic. You really have to research about each function type, and what your function stack is, to get the most value.
2) I don't think MBTI is a perfect solution for every type, but I'm one of the lucky types (maybe intuitive introverts) who I feel benefit the most. For my type specifically, it describes me SO WELL that its scary. Far far more accurately than a 'random' or non-scientific theory could describe me.
I watched this video about myself and it says things that no person has ever understood about me, at a level so deep its like touching the heart of my soul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKzX-D2-GM
You could look more into taking this test to narrow down what your function stack is https://sakinorva.net/functions
If you resonate at all with what I said in that post you might be something similar.
When I understood these things, I stopped seeing them as me being "broken" per se... I mean I never thought I was broken but I would be very frustrated why my mind was always "empty" when other engineers seem to always have a neverending objective stream of concrete ideas.
Over time, as I read more and more and more about functions, I started to see and relate to people much better and differently, and also see how the parts of me I used to be confused at are actually huge advantages. And the areas where I am weak at (extremely in-depth domain knowledge) I can interact with those people and lean on them for that.
There are only 16 types. While that's a few more than zodiac signs, does it seem likely that 16 categories would describe people in a specific enough way to be falsifiable? I see them as 16 categories with overwhelmingly positively biased descriptions, making people prone to seeing themself in the category description.
I'm not saying the underlying axes are completely wrong, but if you read the 4 descriptions which are one letter off of your MBTI type, do at least 2 of them also resonate with you?
https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/the-16-...
I do not care about whether or not it's a system that describes "all types", I literally said that in my original post that it might be completely useless to most "types" or it could just be not an all encompassing formula at all. I care that it describes MY TYPE, or even more specifically, ME.
Did you watch the video I put and the subjects he talks about? The things he discuss in that video resonate so well with me to the deepest interworking mechanisms within my own mind, and they're complex in nature, they are not vague statements.
All if this anyway is completely irrefutable to me, because I have observed it. No amount of Hacker news people lamenting that it's not scientific will ever change my mind, as I know my own mind 1000x better, and I know what explains it and what does not. I know how it's interwoven and related in 1000 interconnected ways, and the ways it is not. I can look at certain things about my mind and see them so clearly it's like looking at the sky is blue.
I also literally JUST said the "overall descriptions" are too general to be useful, and the real benefit is learning the actual function stack, and in what positions. Looking at 4 sentence descriptions of types to disprove what I'm saying is a stupid endeavor.
Most of everyone's interpretation has to do with behavior, this probably makes it "bite sized" for low-attention span people who just want to take quizzes online and move on. For the most part, it has nothing to do with behaviors, at least the parts I am interested in. It has to do with the way the brain perceives, processes, interprets, and assimilates information in vastly different ways.
Thanks for pointing a out functions! Will definitely check it out.
Interesting, so that is in the group I mentioned (intuitive introverts) which probably benefit the most. I know several other INxx types in my life who had profound realizations after reading about functions which helped them understand "why am I like this?". I think because any Ni/Ne functions are very confusing to understand, as the majority of the population doesn't operate like that. So all advice you will generally get doesn't even align with the core way your brain operates. If MBTI stats are correct, only about 20% of the population is N type.
I won't talk about MBTI too much as I want to answer your questions, but there is a bit more here to unpack. If you find the functions useful, great. If not, also great. I'm not trying to "push" anything (for example IM sure there are flaws with the model, but as far as intuitive introverted types, INFP/INFJ/INTJ/INTP I think it really NAILS it. The creator of MBTI was INFP so perhaps that's why). I'm only saying for me personally it was one of the most profound realizations I've had in "WHY AM I LIKE THIS???". Not knowing never "blocked" me from being ambitious or having success, but it made it so much harder and more confusing and stressful. It literally drove me mad, like phantom in my head that wouldn't go away. Now all that is gone, all that's left is serenity and power.
First you can already see people replying about how its BS, ignore that and decide for yourself. Just watch that channel I sent, watch his INTP/ENTP video and see if it resonates for you (5 signs youre not INTP/5 signs youre not ENTP). If it does, it should resonate SUPER deeply. If it "sort of" resonates, try another type. If none resonate, move on.
INTP functions are Ti/Ne/Si/Fe. Keep this image up as you're looking at stuff...
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/4FOxRzLRbFa1d3dGmNC8csMUT7...
Also this one...
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e3/a7/cd/e3a7cd2cd36588ed593491234...
There's a lot of good info here and here specific to IN and NP types (maybe read later if you feel like it):
https://personalityjunkie.com/infj-intp-intj-infp-enfp-entp-...
https://personalityjunkie.com/the-intp/
This info is more "generalized" though you will have to do a lot of reading on your own. Thats why I recommend just watching those videos first, he really goes in extreme depth which is why I like it - high information density.
5 signs youre not INTP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jUosExjWPg
If you end up not being an INTP, you still could be a dominant/auxilary Ti user like ENTP, etc. Watching those videos and reading will help you narrow it down.
As for your questions --
Something about them I can't put my finger on it. I hate to bring up MBTI again (but as I said it's so relevant to me in my everyday life. this is why I love it, it helps me navigate certain peoples minds). I think you should read about Ti for sure, as I am an extremely heavy Te user, which are very different (this image important):
https://i.redd.it...
"I like engineering/design and making usable things" => Make usable things. I don't make unusable things because its waste of time, I make things that give me what I want most (freedom), which also correlates to money. I just really enjoy programming as that process of doing it
"However, whatever I do is never enough for "others" while it is really okay for me" => I literally give zero fucks about others, I'm sure thats obvious by now. I literally couldn't give a flying asshole hair about what someone's opinion is. Seriously though, I picked a business partner I got along with, and we built things, and made lots of $, and had lots of fun, and I wake up every day excited for what the day brings. I work very very hard, but it never feels like "work." Thinking of "others" is so far from my realm of reality that ... well, even when I worked for someone at my first job, I didn't care about that. I care about what I value above others.
"I move on to the next project or venture. There is no introspection from what I built." => Hmm... I have some of the most painful failures in some projects you could ever imagine. I have 2 stories that come to mind, where it was absolutely soul crushing. Think of that guy who sold his shares in apple for $4000. its kind of like that. Even for these projects I dont really feel introspection, just reference points to expand my experience, and make me battle hardened. I don't think much of them, or lament about them. I also dont have any major epiphanies of introspection about them. They just happened, and thats that.
"because they are just replicas nothing more" => Again this is like a Ti/Te thing I think. For my own code, I treat it like art. You might think if I care about things as a "tool" then I dont care about code quality or how it looks. Quite the contrary, I think my type is extremely creative characteristically, and I am also extremely creative. I like to draw and paint as much as I like to code. I embody both extremely logical and extremely creative processes, so I treat my code like art. The best solution to me is an elegant one. So I also would be bothered by creating hollow replicas of things IF I didn't have something else more meaningful to me. My neovim config is something dear to me. I've refined my vim/neovim config for my entire professional life, and it feels like my "essence" as weird as that sounds. Its very meaningful to me. So I channel my positive creative energy into things that DO matter, while I can also throw up a cheap replica I did in a day and not think that it hurts my identity. If I didn't have those other meaningful things though, it WOULD hurt me for sure. I channel my soul and being into most code I write, and thats part of why big failures hurt me so much, it feels like a part of me is gone. I used to apply my energy to anything and everything in 20s, and now Im far more deliberate about what gets that "soul juice". the rest of the time, other things get a dilluted form of my energy that doesnt take away from me.
"The problem here is I can't afford the luxury of time because of other aspects of life. I get an hour of free personal time at max" => This is probably one of the largest problems I see here. Out of the entire post. Is this something you can fix in any way possible? Is it because of school? Are you sure its a real problem that cant be fixed? When I started I did freelancing for 8 hours a day and then spent the whole rest of the day learning and doing my own personal projects. When I had my first job, I worked 8 hours a day coding at a company, and another 5-8 hours building my own first app. Ideally theres a lot of time you can make, if you cut out TV, going out, etc.
5.
"The whole idea of finding an average...
I don't have most answers but it seems like there are certain qualities in you that is so helpful for the way you are as a person.
Currently, I also don't like to learn for the sake of learning. I used to be love learning and knowing things for the sake of it. But that doesn't payoff in real life. What good use is knowledge when I learned only for sake of learning.
Now I want to change and it only comes from doing things and actually implementing stuff. All I could do was think and that too was flawed thinking. These days I am doing more but still I think a lot.
I want to also disregard the opinions but I feel like what value would I provide. This was one reason I stopped blogging because there are already experts in the field who are more authentic. What would my perspective bring when I will be just paraphrasing already known stuff in slightly different way.
I can understand how you are the way you are. So we have fundamentally different mode of thinking. But you have given me some ideas.
There are things I can't say in public comment and only in private conversation. It would be fun to talk with you.
This is the key. Vast majority of people can maybe code for 20 hours a week, and not 60-100 like you can. If you're blessed with such genetics, your mindset makes sense, as it will actually generate good payoff for you. However, bear in mind that regular ("average") people play in a different, much lower league.
I've helped ... maybe close to 70-100 people over the years, some for only a day, some for months, some for a year. (helping them with coding, business stuff, etc). I have a lot of solid reference points of what all different wakes of life are capable of.
Take ADHD for instance... my first business partner had extreme ADHD and also used it effectively to earn a net worth over several hundred million. He started by selling drugs and poor (just to diffuse any ideas he was born rich like your other comment). He just had a bunch of ways to deal with it effectively and channel it.
My other business partner mainly does jujitsu a lot, and has a lower innate focus level, but he's done all sorts of combinations of activities and sleeping patterns and supplements and whatnot to generate the best possible method for focusing, and has done it. We both work together all day long. For example he has to work in silence, or have certain music playing.
I also have 2 half brothers that are not from the same dad (where I get my mental genetics from, as I am identical to my dad). My one brother works at a dispensary and has never worked his brain harder than literally pushing 5 buttons in order on the screen, was JUST talking to me about this extensively. I took him on a 'deep dive' coding session with me over the period of 6 hours and did that multiple days in a row, and he had a panic attack (sort of) about how intense it was. He felt bad for several days because of the stark realization how he's never used his brain that hard in his life (hes wanting to know code, and I brought him right in on a screenshare where I made him program extensively on deep parts of the app, diving right into the deep end, where he got total information overload). His reality in a sense was shattered, and he had literally an "awakening" of sorts because it made him realize where he's at, and what he's been doing, what he's NOT been doing, and gave him a reference point SO far outside his comfort zone that it caused all his remaining reference points to "recalibrate" to encompass that outlier. I didn't talk to him for a week to let it digest, and he later said he naturally started watching videos on his own and said it felt "really good" to use his brain like this. He's been doing it more and more, flexing it more and more.
This is the process through which one can do that, of course you're not going to do 15 hours of coding right away, but just by flexing it repeatedly and having moments of self awareness and self clarity, is it possible. I KNOW it's possible because I've seen many people do it (not to the level I do, but absolutely to the level where you can achieve great monetary success).
The problem is, most people will never GET that moment of self clarity becuase they don't have someone like me being harsh and telling them they're a loser and it's time to wake up. Everyone around them is an enabler telling them its in their genetics that they can't do it, that the other person is "lucky", or hand holding and coddling them into a continued sedated state of self deception.
However, in the end I chose not to do anything with that knowledge and that interest, and work relatively simple back-end jobs. Why? Because, no matter how hard I try, I can't put in more than 15-20 hours of hard focus per week. If I try to push myself harder, I just crash (sometimes even after two days - I get intense headaches on day three and my experiment is concluded). I've tried it probably dozens of times, and the results were always similar - if anything, it got worse with age (I had more energy in my twenties than now in my fourties).
Have you tried fasting or other things to help try to narrow down the cause of your headaches? Have you had extensive blood panels (a full panel, not a simple one your doctor will give you... I think you have to order the FULL full ones online). A lot of my business partners and people I work with do that biohacking stuff where they try to find out every way to augment their body. They do weird stuff like fly to mexico to get stem cell injections, etc. Ive never been into that, I just take a multivitamin, but it's possible there is something you're deficient in that could be found out? I'd be almost certain there is SOME combination of SOME THING on this earth that would fix whatever it is, even if it's not well medically documented.
I know a number of people with severe neurotic issues, like TRUE neurotic issues, and fasting is really the only common denominator of what has helped them more than any medicine. People have thought fasting was fugazi woo-woo for the longest time but I believe medical science is now catching up as to the benefit (harvard studies, etc). Ive fruit fasted for 45 days once and healed my gall bladder after the doctor couldnt explain what was wrong with it and their only option was to cut it out.
The headaches themselves are from coffee (ab)use. But, without the coffee, I would succumb to fatigue earlier.
Right now, it doesn't matter that much. Luckily, through some smart choices (always aggresively going for the highest paying work I could get) and through frugal living, I've FIREd and now live a life of leisure, which seems to fit my disposition quite nicely. Not everyone was made to be a star.
Conversation with Exuma has made me realize he only learns when he absolutely needs to, while I learn when I feel like learning.
Then I can't also put focus. Because of inefficiencies in other aspect of life. I can't optimize because I am just paranoid on most things. I would love to work for myself but I do not come from a background (because of work, energy and time) where I can sustain it. Maybe I should think of ways to do it and try to find ways.
However, do you think putting 2 hrs a week on a single project for extended time will take me to places?
What places? Getting a job in the field? I think it could do it, unless the field is very hard to get into (e.g. 3d computer vision/vSLAM is considerably harder to get into than computer graphics, machine learning research is much harder to get into than applied machine learning (glorified data science) etc.). A good approach is to talk to some insiders in the field to get a feel of how hard would it be. If you don't know anyone, topical subreddits are not the worst place to ask this.
I went through exactly this path, even got some interviews, but learned that the jobs that would interest me the most are hardest to get into, and would mean a large pay decrease (I was making a ton in my current area of expertise). The nail in the coffin was chatting with some guy from Facebook AR (I met him on reddit) team who had my dream job and who said that, in my position, he'd prefer to just accumulate money and FIRE in 5 years, instead of starting a new career.
But this sort of learning is more about the purpose of stimulating my mind with challenges rather than acquiring knowledge.
80% of my time learning is when its a tool, 20% of the time its for stimulation, 100% of the time it is for some meaning other than it being satisfying to collect knowledge and facts, which is 0% of the time.
I never got how someone who wants to simply get by by doing minimal (or prererably none, but that's not usually possible) amount of work is a loser, but someone who say inherited millions and does nothing their whole life is not a loser.
Nothing wrong with being average programmer, everyone starts somewhere, and my early Stack Overflow questions are hilarious.
Also, it's perfectly fine to aim at being average - one may be aware of various limitations (health, intelligence, memory, ADHD and similar disorders, family situation) that will likely limit them to being average at best. If they aim for being a star despite those limitations, they risk burning out and getting nowhere.
So do you have any clue how I can optimize the position in the industry? I am interested in the most of the subtopics in the field of computer science. I just want to find a route with highest reward for an average developer.
Apparently average research engineers makes a lot compared to say web developer, but the route requires PhD.
What do you think is a good track?
In general, if you want to maximize money, it does not make sense to go into any hard and niche fields (graphics, machine learning research etc.) because they're filled with very talented enthusiasts, and if you're not that, you will have a very hard time even being average in such fields. Not to mention that such fields often (but not always) pay less that your run of the mill backend development job, and have 1000x less open positions, which means it's harder to apply for jobs, you may have to move more often etc. It's basically all downsides pretty much, and the only upside is being able to work on your passion - which is what motivates people who get into those fields.
Yes!! I can totally relate to what you are saying. I got started because I was interested and I am still passionate about it. But there is only so much that I can do. It just doesn't make sense for me to continue for PhD because even with PhD there is no guarantee that I would be able to get somewhere as I am definitely not someone coming from those top20 universities.
So by definition I rule out the chances of being an average research engineer. That's one clarity! Thank you!
Since I have most background in hard niches as you mentioned above, is there a way to transition to something else? What would the possible path be like if my ultimate goal is to become staff engineer or principal engineer?
All that being said, I think someone is better off looking at organization styles and culture than job titles for a comfortable, earn your keep, engineering job.
However, I kindly request you to not conclude that wanting to be average doesn't mean not having interest in the field. It's the contrary. I am so invested, I know what mind blogging things people can do. And I also know I will never be able to reach where these people are.
Hence, I want to understand a way to find the balance. It's okay to be curious and learning. Also the fact life isn't fair for everyone. For some it comes easy, for some it may take lifetime.