Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice | Kalzumeus Software

90% of programming jobs are in creating Line of Business software: Economics 101: the price for anything (including you) is a function of the supply of it and demand for it.

Software solves business problems.  Software often solves business problems despite being soul-crushingly boring and of minimal technical complexity. (..) It does not matter to the company that the reporting form is the world’s simplest CRUD app, it only matters that it either saves the company costs or generates additional revenue.
There are companies which create software which actually gets used by customers, which describes almost everything that you probably think of when you think of software.  It is unlikely that you will work at one unless you work towards making this happen.  Even if you actually work at one, many of the programmers there do not work on customer-facing software, either.

Engineers are hired to create business value, not to program things:  Businesses do things for irrational and political reasons all the time (see below), but in the main they converge on doing things which increase revenue or reduce costs. Status (..) is awarded to people who successfully take credit for doing one of these things.

The person who has decided to bring on one more engineer is not doing it because they love having a geek around the room, they are doing it because adding the geek allows them to complete a project (or projects) which will add revenue or decrease costs.  Producing beautiful software is not a goal.  Solving complex technical problems is not a goal.  Writing bug-free code is not a goal.  Using sexy programming languages is not a goal.  Add revenue.  Reduce costs.  Those are your only goals.

Profit Centers are the part of an organization that bring in the bacon: partners at law firms, sales at enterprise software companies, “masters of the universe” on Wall Street, etc etc.  Cost Centers are, well, everybody else.  You really want to be attached to Profit Centers because it will bring you higher wages, more respect, and greater opportunities for everything of value to you.

Engineers in particular are usually very highly paid Cost Centers. This is what brings us wonderful ideas like outsourcing, which is “Let’s replace really expensive Cost Centers who do some magic which we kinda need but don’t really care about with less expensive Cost Centers in a lower wage country”. (..) Nobody ever outsources Profit Centers.

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.

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.

Do Java programmers make more money than .NET programmers?  Anyone describing themselves as either a Java programmer or .NET programmer has already lost, because a) they’re a programmer (you’re not, see above) and b) they’re making themselves non-hireable for most programming jobs.

Talented engineers are rare — vastly rarer than opportunities to use them — and it is a seller’s market for talent right now in almost every facet of the field.  Everybody at Matasano uses Ruby.  If you don’t, but are a good engineer, they’ll hire you anyway.  (A good engineer has a track record of — repeat after me — increasing revenue or decreasing costs.)  Much of Fog Creek uses the Microsoft Stack.  I can’t even spell ASP.NET and they’d still hire me.

There are companies with broken HR policies where lack of a buzzword means you won’t be selected.  You don’t want to work for them, but if you really do, you can add the relevant buzzword to your resume. (..)

Co-workers and bosses are not usually your friends: You will spend a lot of time with co-workers.  You may eventually become close friends with some of them (..) You should be a good person to everyone you meet — it is the moral thing to do, and as a sidenote will really help your networking

You radically overestimate the average skill of the competition because of the crowd you hang around with: Many people already successfully employed as senior engineers cannot actually implement FizzBuzz. Key takeaway: you probably are good enough to work at that company you think you’re not good enough for.

Networking: it isn’t just for TCP packets: Networking just means a) meeting people who at some point can do things for you (or vice versa) and b) making a favorable impression on them.

Strive to help people.  It is the right thing to do, and people are keenly aware of who have in the past given them or theirs favors.  If you ever can’t help someone but know someone who can, pass them to the appropriate person with a recommendation.  If you do this right, two people will be happy with you and favorably disposed to helping you out in the future.

Academia is not like the real world: Your GPA largely doesn’t matter (modulo one high profile exception: a multinational advertising firm). (..) it only determines whether your resume gets selected for job interviews.

Your major and minor don’t matter.  Most decisionmakers in industry couldn’t tell the difference between a major in Computer Science and a major in Mathematics if they tried.

In general, big companies pay more (money, benefits, etc) than startups.  Engineers with high perceived value make more than those with low perceived value.  Senior engineers make more than junior engineers.  People working in high-cost areas make more than people in low-cost areas.  People who are skilled in negotiation make more than those who are not.

We have strong cultural training to not ask about salary, ever. This is not universal.  In many cultures, professional contexts are a perfectly appropriate time to discuss money.  (If you were a middle class Japanese man, you could reasonably be expected to reveal your exact salary to a 2nd date, anyone from your soccer club, or the guy who makes your sushi.)

If I were a Marxist academic or a conspiracy theorist, I might think that this bit of middle class American culture was specifically engineered to be in the interests of employers and against the interests of employees.  Prior to a discussion of salary at any particular target employer, you should speak to someone who works there in a similar situation and ask about the salary range for the position.

Engineers are routinely offered a suite of benefits.  It is worth worrying, in the United States, about health insurance (traditionally, you get it and your employer foots most or all of the costs) and your retirement program, which is some variant of “we will match contributions to your 401k up to X% of salary.”  The value of that is easy to calculate: X% of salary.  (It is free money, so always max out your IRA up to the employer match.  Put it in index funds and forget about it for 40 years.)

How do I become better at negotiation?  This could be a post in itself.  Short version:
a)  Remember you’re selling the solution to a business need (raise revenue or decrease costs) rather than programming skill or your beautiful face.
b)  Negotiate aggressively with appropriate confidence, like the ethical professional you are.  It is what your counterparty is probably doing.  You’re aiming for a mutual beneficial offer, not for saying Yes every time they say something.
c)  “What is your previous salary?” is employer-speak for “Please give me reasons to pay you less money.”  Answer appropriately.
d)  Always have a counteroffer.  Be comfortable counteroffering around axes you care about other than money.  If they can’t go higher on salary then talk about vacation instead.
e)  The only time to ever discuss salary is after you have reached agreement in principle that they will hire you if you can strike a mutually beneficial deal.  This is late in the process after they have invested a lot of time and money in you, specifically, not at the interview. 
f)  Read a book.  Many have been written about negotiation.  I like Getting To Yes

Working at a startup, you tend to meet people doing startups. Most of them will not be able to hire you in two years. Working at a large corporation, you tend to meet other people in large corporations in your area.  Many of them either will be able to hire you or will have the ear of someone able to hire you in two years.

Working in a startup is a career path but, more than that, it is a lifestyle choice. This is similar to working in investment banking or academia. Those are three very different lifestyles.  Many people will attempt to sell you those lifestyles as being in your interests, for their own reasons.  If you genuinely would enjoy that lifestyle, go nuts.  If you only enjoy certain bits of it, remember that many things are available a la carte if you really want them.  For example, if you want to work on cutting-edge technology but also want to see your kids at 5:30 PM, you can work on cutting-edge technology at many, many, many megacorps.

Your most important professional skill is communication: Remember engineers are not hired to create programs and how they are hired to create business value? The dominant quality which gets you jobs is the ability to give people the perception that you will create value.  This is not necessarily coextensive with ability to create value.

Some of the best programmers I know are pathologically incapable of carrying on a conversation.  People disproportionately a) wouldn’t want to work with them or b) will underestimate their value-creation ability because they gain insight into that ability through conversation and the person just doesn’t implement that protocol

Conversely, people routinely assume that I am among the best programmers they know entirely because a) there exists observable evidence that I can program and b) I write and speak really, really well.

Communication is a skill. Practice it: you will get better. One key sub-skill is being able to quickly, concisely, and confidently explain how you create value to someone who is not an expert in your field and who does not have a priori reasons to love you.

All business decisions are ultimately made by one or a handful of multi-cellular organisms closely related to chimpanzees, not by rules or by algorithms: People are people.  Social grooming is a really important skill.  People will often back suggestions by friends because they are friends, even when other suggestions might actually be better.  People will often be favoritably disposed to people they have broken bread with.

Actual grooming is at least moderately important, too, because people are hilariously easy to hack by expedients such as dressing appropriately for the situation, maintaining a professional appearance, speaking in a confident tone of voice, etc.  Your business suit will probably cost about as much as a computer monitor.  You only need it once in a blue moon, but when you need it you’ll be really, really, really glad that you have it.

At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career. Either talk to older people or trust the social scientists who have: family, faith, hobbies, etc etc generally swamp career achievements and money in terms of things which actually produce happiness.  Optimize appropriately.  Your career is important, and right now it might seem like the most important thing in your life, but odds are that is not what you’ll believe forever.  Work to live, don’t live to work.