In the long term, working on your own projects using the latest technologies and latest editions of popular languages, and having projects to show for it, will give you much more experience and credibility than working at a company for the same amount of time.
Over the years, I'm sure early adapters of Java, .Net, Ajax, Rails, Django, and Objective C did not have a hard time finding jobs. Companies typically try to convert existing developers to use new languages, and an employee hired for this knowledge will be an expert. A startup using the latest technologies will want to hire employees who already possess this knowledge. Finally, a user experimenting with new technologies might decide that he or she is so far ahead of companies who are still using old technology that he or she should start a business.
Bullshit. For every single Paul Graham there are hundreds of entrepreneurs living in abject poverty, wondering how they'll feed their kids or where they get the money to pay the mortgage.
You're taking a very small subset of extremely bright, assertive go getters and insinuating that this is the norm. It is not, and statistics show this.
Thanks for your reply. You will note that I was specifically writing about software entrepreneurs who learn and prove knowledge of the latest technologies and latest languages. They will never have a tough time finding a job if they needed to. Even before I edited and added onto my post, I mentioned that.
In my opinion, if they're broke, assuming they are software developers who use the latest technologies to create live projects they can demonstrate (and not some other kind of entrepreneur), then maybe they should "cash in" on their earned skills and work for a while.
Also, having lots of obligations requiring a steady income are needs that should be taken care of first. Everybody is in a different financial situation short term, but the fact is that if you give a startup a go, and use the latest technologies, you won't have a problem finding a job if you need to.
As to at what point a software entrepreneur should put off their ambitions and work at a related company instead for a while, that will depend on the startup and personal circumstances, so it is out of scope for my posts.
They will never have a tough time finding a job if they needed to
Talk to someone who went through the dot bomb. There was a while there where good programmers were having difficulty.
Software entrepreneurs can fail just as hard as any other entrepreneur can. It's hard work running your own business, even in software. This gets even harder and harder as you get older.
Even PG says to start young, when you don't have any massive responsibilities. The older you get, the higher your "minimum income" level goes.
Thanks for the clarification. It sounds like your example is somebody who is older, with family and kids to support, a mortgage or other startup debt to pay off, and going through the dot com bomb, as a counterpoint to my statement.
Again, it does not disprove that in the long term, somebody who is a software entrepreneur who learns the latest technologies and has visible projects they've completed, will not have a difficult time finding a job. I am not saying the salary will be huge or that you won't need to relocate, or that there won't be a bad time in the short term.
But in the long term, somebody who is competent will learn way more than they would have during the same time they would at a job, and if they have projects they can show off, they will not have trouble finding a job to pay the bills--that's the entire scope of my post.
Would it be correct to say that how entrepreneurs handle their personal and company funds are out of scope for what I said? In the long term, you will learn more from working on your own projects, and if you can demonstrate your projects, will have no problem finding a job (no more than any other person competing for the same job.)
Therefore, when competing for a job, somebody who has put to use new technologies that companies want to incorporate, and can demonstrate this, will likely do very well in the hiring process.
Also, when companies lay people off in a bad economy, it doesn't always mean that they can't afford to have that many people. They may actually want to hire experts (at a reasonable price), knowing that during a bad economy, there might be some looking for a job.
The older you get, the higher your "minimum income" level goes.
I'm 25, and my "minimum income" is ridiculous, and probably higher than most 40-year-olds'. The reason is that I live in New York. If I left New York, it would drop by a factor of 2-3, since rent is my biggest expenditure by far.
In practice, many people will be reducing their "minimum income" over the next ten years, because these financial problems are not going away any time soon.
I've also known grad students who've raised families (2-3 kids) on two student stipends. It can be done. Of course, they'll have to "sell out" and work for McKinsey in 15 years, when their kids are entering college, but that's far off in the distance.
