I agree that "the economy" has relatively little to do with the ability for "a" startup to succeed, given the right startup, with the right technology, in the right political environment, in the right social environment...
But further up you basically said "if you haven't made a lot of money in tech in the last 10 years then you're doing something wrong"
Which is a tautology, independent of how you define success. If you don't succeed, you did something wrong. But define "a lot of money"
Is a "lot of money" a six figure personal income? A six figure income is easy to get. Just work hard and be good at your job for a few years, and don't be afraid to negotiate. Set your terms, if you're valuable they'll pay for your time.
Or are we talking on the scale of companies? I helped build up a small garage operation into a multi-million dollar turnover enterprise - is that a lot of money? Probably to some people, but not compared to the multi-billion dollar companies.
Some random nobody made a website that lets people post 140 characters and we all lol'ed and now it's worth more than twenty billion dollars. There were millions of web forums experimenting with different modes of communication. Did everyone who tried to start a social media website at the same time as twitter do "something wrong" because they didn't understand the magic formula?
If you're talking on a personal level, then yes, making money in "tech" is easy. I've made "a lot" of money in "tech." I live more comfortably than my peers. But I would not say it's been easy, or it's just been some fluke.
The tech job will get you the six figure income easily. At the same time, you should have been investing in tech stocks all throughout the past decade. I invested $25k into FB at ipo, no need to say what that position is worth today. Other companies: Twilio, AMD, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Cloudflare, etc. have also brought massive gains that make a value investor’s face blanche.
The next step for the ambitious tech person, would be to take some of that money and fund a new startup, staying away from venture capital as long as you can, and then when the time is right, opening up to investment and growing an even larger business rapidly and keeping as much equity as possible.
Or, you can continue to simply accumulate income and grow your investments, working your way toward more prestigious positions.
But further up you basically said "if you haven't made a lot of money in tech in the last 10 years then you're doing something wrong"
Which is a tautology, independent of how you define success. If you don't succeed, you did something wrong. But define "a lot of money"
Is a "lot of money" a six figure personal income? A six figure income is easy to get. Just work hard and be good at your job for a few years, and don't be afraid to negotiate. Set your terms, if you're valuable they'll pay for your time.
Or are we talking on the scale of companies? I helped build up a small garage operation into a multi-million dollar turnover enterprise - is that a lot of money? Probably to some people, but not compared to the multi-billion dollar companies.
Some random nobody made a website that lets people post 140 characters and we all lol'ed and now it's worth more than twenty billion dollars. There were millions of web forums experimenting with different modes of communication. Did everyone who tried to start a social media website at the same time as twitter do "something wrong" because they didn't understand the magic formula?
If you're talking on a personal level, then yes, making money in "tech" is easy. I've made "a lot" of money in "tech." I live more comfortably than my peers. But I would not say it's been easy, or it's just been some fluke.