What's really screwed up is that several people that made that god-awful decision have now moved on to different companies (with pay raises I'm sure). So not only did they make an objectively terrible decision, but they also left the mess to whomever it ended up falling in the lap of, and not only that, but they got rewarded for it, too!
Always jump on the cool stuff even if it makes no sense for the business. In most places as SW engineer you are not rewarded for creating business value or saving money. You are being rewarded for knowing technologies.
For lower positions/companies, I would probably agree.
If you want to make a lot of stable liquid money (400,000$+ for principal engineers at big companies and 7 figures for the top individual contributors), then you need to join a big company and deliver high value results consistently to get those offers/promotions (probably a little luck too).
That's all well and good, but those are highly competitive positions. Even joining the companies where this is possible in the first place is competitive. It isn't something you can "just" do.
Also, this only applies to an elite subset of "big companies". Few, if any, individual contributors at Oracle or IBM are anywhere near that.
Getting in is definitely competitive but study enough data structures and algorithms and you should be able to get into at least 1.
Making principal is even harder but I think it is pretty attainable if you put in extra work where the extra work is learning about your field and applying it to the business problems for your org.
I work at one of these companies and most people are 9-5'ers who work as cog's, don't spend extra time learning about their field, don't think big, and don't apply them to the job (aka, aren't leaders which is what principal engineers are).
True, but if you're not one of those principle engineers already then you likely have no ability influence what tech choices are being made and you should just learn the new tech so you can jump ship more easily in the future
Really? I propose tons of ideas to my team/org about technical decisions I think we should move towards and while a good portion of them get shot down, lots get positive feedback/management backing from my team. This combined with me owning the projects/proposals I made got me promoted very quickly.
What I've learned from the past few days on hackernews is that apparently I have worked at some shitty jobs. Even when I have owned a project and led it to massive success as far as the company was concerned, like under half the budget and half the timeline, its just led to someone higher up taking notice. Those higher ups then either come in and start directing things themselves because they think we cant possibly keep succeeding, or they hire someone from outside the company to come in and take over.
A decade is less than 1/4th of an employees career at the current retirement age of 66/67 and there are people that get this compensation in a decade (a rare few even less, granted it is not trivial).
Realistically most of us will never be in the position to make 400k or more. Once you are at that level you are part of the "in" crowd but most of us will always be replaceable cogs in the wheel.
Wanna make that kind of money? Go found a unicorn and get the silly money VCs to flood your company with cash, and then take your platinum parachute out.
In other words, go be Elon Musk or Steve Jobs.
If you’re not already Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, then that might be a little harder for you to do.
Corporate software engineering is insanity.