Coding or selling the code?
From developer to entrepreneur: what is your way up?
Disassembling careers of the technology rockstars and young entrepreneurs all over the world
There are two topics that are covered in a veil of secrecy, myths, and misunderstandings. They keep busy the minds of most people not depending on the circumstances. We are making life-changing decisions just to get these two things in one or another way. These things are sex and money. I hope that with the first one you’re happy and satisfied, so in this article, I’d like to focus on the latter, in particular, the main way of accumulating wealth: building a successful career through improving skills, promotions, publicity, and other moves. My thoughts will be based on biographies of well-known entrepreneurs, my own experience of moving from an employed data scientist to the tech entrepreneur and success and failure stories, of my colleagues and of my friends from A-Players, that help tech specialists to grow as managers and entrepreneurs. This story is relatively biased to the IT sector, although, some ideas can and should be applied to other professions as well.
A note: this is not an article on how to become a founder of a unicorn startup, but rather about key cornerstones that one will meet while switching from being the employee to having employees yourself. Also, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it: it’s better to be a good developer than a bad businessman.
Dream roadmap
How young professionals in the tech sector see their perfect career according to the role models from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla?
- Getting motivated by the famous Steve Jobs speech to the Stanford alumni;
- Enrolling to the top university and dropping out after the first year because of launching next unicorn startup in parents’ garage;
- Within the first couple of months getting investments from Sequoia, YC, and A16Z while being already evaluated as a multi-unicorn;
- Instagramming entrepreneurs’ life, becoming a 1B-followers influencer;
- Being sold to FAANG, buying an island, becoming an honors fellow of the university you dropped out from. No limits ahead!
Real-life roadmap
Truth be told, the real career of the tech guys that became entrepreneurs usually looks like the following:
- Finishing the university you got lucky to be admitted. Getting a Masters or Ph.D., doing that FAANG internship on the last years;
- Working on SWE job in Consulting / Startup / Enterprise / Tech Giant for a couple of years to get experience;
- Changing a place, getting Oracle / MS or other certifications to officially become a Senior Developer or an Architect and spend 5–10 years on this position;
- In a couple of years finally being promoted to the managing position in tech or clients support department, becoming more public;
- After another 5–10 years of loyal service, you take some people and clients from the last job and start your own consulting firm!
Congrats, now you’re in your 50s and finally the entrepreneur officially. But what about guys in their 20s running their own companies or being top managers (not necessarily of unicorns)? Are they all just fake and not experienced enough? Or maybe there are some particular educational, psychological, environmental and social checkpoints that can be completed faster than it is supposed to and these people realized it before the others?
Applied social mobility theory
The attempt to categorize, or even worse — try to teach, paths that successful people went through is at least churlish and at the most delusional task. How we can compare and structure different cultures, conditions, environments, talents, and characters? Still, in every place in the world where there are alive beings, they follow some hierarchy and sometimes they can move up or down through it. Humans societies over time have created several organizational ladders where each person can climb from bottom to the top if following some rules and exposing the talents right: army, professional sports, church, school, politics, arts, media, and families. These are the social institutes that Soviet / American sociologist P. Sorokin described in his work Social and cultural dynamics in New York in the 1930s. I understand that you might close the article right now thinking that I am recommending you, an educated and experienced IT professional, to go to the army, join the church, or even become a member of some mafia family.
It’s not the case :) What I am offering here, is to rethink these social mobility ladders from the point of view of what exactly people there are doing to get to the top. Maybe they’re applicable to career and entrepreneurship as well? Maybe there is something that might suit particularly for you and what you already successfully using but don’t really comprehend it? I have been particularly inspired by this idea by Ukrainian coach Vsevolod Zelenin and this video of his workshop on social mobility (in Russian).
Army
The army is for the strong and brave people. Apart from the dedication and hard work, people who succeed in the battlefield are the ones who have committed a feat, act of bravery. They serve as leaders and role models for younger soldiers, later become influential political and business leaders and it was like this in all the times: from ancient tribes to modern military conflicts.
Sports
Athletes from Ancient Greece to nowadays were always respected and promoted whatever ventures they have had aside from the sports. Doing professional sports is all about the moment of glory after breaking a record. The winner takes it all. But behind this moment of glory are years of devastating routines, often very simple, one can say stupid, set of everyday actions.
Church
Common sense aside, religion serves as a lighthouse for people looking for a sense of life in the difficult and often harsh world. But actually every one of us sometimes needs a shepherd in the domestic, professional, health and other issues: that’s why we visit coaches, doctors, and teachers: they enlighten and explain to us things and we’re happy to come back to them again and again. The gurus that could explain it at best and had a lot of followers rarely haven't had a high position in society.
Education
Today having a degree isn’t an exclusive thing, but just a couple of hundred years ago almost everywhere it was a respectful skill to be able to read and write letters. I am sure you know about courtier scientists at the royal palaces. Or another ultimate example can be druids in the tribes. Having a monopoly on some unique knowledge always was a privilege and today academic members, if play they card right, can get very high.
Politics
Unfortunately, by politics here I don’t mean public sector work. It’s more about the ability to understand interhuman relationships, hidden conjunctures and knowing how to manipulate them in your favor. We all do this in one or another way even while being kids, manipulating our parents to get what we want. Some of us become just very good in this game.
Arts
Of course, we don’t just think about fights and manipulations. People are also thriving in art, beauty, and perfection. The works of the artists can outlive their creators for centuries and it can be not only visual arts, books or music, but also science, products, companies and even lifestyles. Of course, you’re always at risk of being forgotten at lifespan and be remembered only after death, but eternal recognition is worth it.
Publicity
“- You are, without a doubt, the worst pirate I have heard of. — But you have heard of me!”, this quote from The Pirates of the Caribbean explains very well the idea of being known. You might not be the bravest, the smartest or even the most hard-working one, but if people know about you and what you’re doing — it is already half of the deal.
Protection
Last but not least, you can be simply a nice person who has the same nice (and, preferably, influential and powerful) friends and family. It may sound a bit unfair to put it as a strategy because being born in the “right” family is a piece of pure luck, but getting “right” friends, partners and even couples depend on us only.
How to climb the ladder?
The described above directions are the hints on what you can use to make the next step in career to become a top-manager, entrepreneur or even just a free expert-consultant. The thing is that you already have used almost all of these approaches to get what you want earlier in your life: as a kid from parents, as a student from teachers, as an employee from your boss, as a citizen from your country. You just have to rethink your previous successes a bit. What exactly made you the best in your class? Good marks? How did you get the last promotion? How did you manage last time any bureaucratic issue?
And yes, it doesn’t mean that you have to stop getting better in your profession or working hard. Just you can try to focus additionally on something that gives results exactly personally for you and eliminate habits and strategies that are not good for your environment or character.
You’re good troubleshooter (army ladder)? Maybe it’s time to find or wait for a crisis situation and heroically solve it (as you already did a lot of times)? Your friends are always helping you (protection ladder)? Maybe don’t waste time on that Youtube blog (church or publicity ladder) to get more clients and go for a coffee with someone you can charm and will be happy to help you? You’re a hard worker able to code 12 hours per day without losing your health? Maybe it’s worth to rethink a dream of creating a piece of art and start just working hard as you can and partner with some creative director who will help you to shape your energy into art? Yes, a synergy of personalities is a key for really big things.
Real-world stories
Reading celebrity biographies is cool, but how about “normal guys” who could make it? Our friends from A-Players made several deep interviews with young tech entrepreneurs with different outcomes of their endeavors.
Dmytro Voloshyn, CTO and co-founder of Preply
Preply is an online educational platform that pairs students with private tutors remotely via online chat. It’s one of the hottest Ukrainian tech startups and raised over $15 million in 5 funding rounds. A-players Recruiting talked to Preply’s co-founder Dmytro Voloshyn about his entrepreneurial journey. While having a scientific background, his first serious career steps Dmytro did in the marketing area, working on creative positions. Then, he had achieved financial success in trading strategical goods in a 2008 crisis time. Studying the market and knowing what and when to buy and sell — sounds like the essence of the ad-hoc education ladder done right :) Last but not least, Dmytro mentions several times the importance of hard work and even impossibility of the existence of such a thing as “work-life balance”. The sports ladder guys definitely understand him :) The full interview with Dmytro is available here:
German Gavrish, software product developer at Airship
German Gavrish is a software engineer with a unique experience who is contributing to improving Airship’s products. A-Players Recruiting talked to him about his career and personal journey as well. German has tried building startups with varied success until he found out the position that gives him the most growth — a software developer with a high impact on product development. On his way to becoming an expert, German mentions that he had had a great mentor, who pushed him to an exceptional level of expertise. Isn’t it a nice example of the protection ladder? What’s interesting, he had good success at Luxoft unless a team grew to dozens of people and German started to feel like a “resource”, not a team player. Also, German mentions a lot of ideas like “ikigai”, purposeful work and desire to create an “umbrella of opportunities” for other talented people. This is how “church” leaders are developing. The full interview with German you can read here:
Alex Honchar, CTO and co-founder of Neurons Lab
The author of the article himself also used several successful strategies which allowed him to become an entrepreneur even before the age of 25. In elementary school, I can’t say I was the smartest guy in the class, but I was regularly asked for advice related to studies and not only. In university, it turned into organizing educational events and workshops and now I keep blogging, public speaking, which means sharing the knowledge and make it clear for everyone — church ladder. Apart from that, I always tried to promote myself and being different in many ways online and offline, being, again, not the smartest guy in the room, but the guy everyone knew about — publicity ladder. Last but not least, I was relatively lucky to build relationships with influential teachers, clients or partners who helped me a lot to get on the next level — I’d say it’s the bits of protection ladder. However, my attempts to create startups with unique ideas (arts) or manipulate people (politics) were always failing — seems like not my things after all :)
Bits of general psychology
Of course, in real life, everything is not that easy. Apart from the necessity of being a professional and working hard regardless of the strategy that works for you, you can combine different talents of yours for more positive effects. Also, it’s important to understand your position clearly and not overestimate yourself. Mark Zuckerberg quit school because he already knew how to create his product and it was the right time. Maybe you still have to wait and learn a bit before you’re ready. Steve Jobs didn’t literally create his Apple in the garage after dropping from the university. He was already a successful entrepreneur and had experience in building and selling products. I understand, that you would like to start as a unicorn, but if you study founders’ careers better, you will see that they already had particular successes and experiences before. It is completely okay to start small as a consultant, simple product or service provider, especially if you’re just starting being the one who sells the code instead of writing it yourself.
Regardless of the profession and strategy that were chosen for career growth, there are several psychological concepts that remain stable and important for entrepreneurship and I would like to discuss them briefly.
- The employee sells his time which he promises to use for a good of employer. Entrepreneur sells a product that gives value. Transitively, he sells the time of his employees that build this product. How you can sell your current employee work as a product?
- The employee has to be productive. The entrepreneur additionally has to be efficient. While working for someone for each unit of your time you have to do your part of the job well. While creating value, you have to efficiently allocate business problems on the units of time of different employees and partners (and yourself) with different skills. You own a factory, not a factory worker anymore.
- We used to compete and see the competition around us. Employees compete with each other for a promotion in a closed system called the company. The reality is that the world is full of all possible resources for everyone and it’s not a zero-sum game. Entrepreneurs collaborate to create new markets, values, and workplaces, instead of competing for pieces of a small pie.
- Employees get paid a fixed amount each month as a clock. Entrepreneurs are the last people who get paid in the company (if they got paid at all) after employees, subcontractors, salesmen, other expenses and taxes.
- Employees are responsible for their piece of code and in the worst case, they can get fired. Entrepreneurs are responsible for all employees, all customers and sometimes even for the markets. And they usually don’t get off easily :)
- Employees study what supposed to be good on average for their profession. Just to get a certificate for that promotion. Entrepreneurs study profession a) deep and profound, being best of the best in the field and b) accompanying core specialization with a lot of side-skills they need on-demand (sales, marketing, public speaking, HR, etc).
- Last but not least even it’s banal one. Employees are passionate about purchasing goods and entrepreneurs are passionate about creating them and making profits.
Conclusions
Obviously, not everyone has to become an entrepreneur or a business person. Only a little percentage of those who try to actually survive and succeed. Moreover, the first several years will be a pure struggle: impostor syndrome, constant lack of time and health, fewer friends and misunderstandings with the closest people. Maybe it will pay off in the future. Maybe not.
I would like to underline, that it is much better and more impactful to be a top-class employee than an average or bad entrepreneur. Tim Cook is an employed CEO of Apple, Sundar Pichai is an employed CEO of Alphabet. History also knows about employees who succeed to become billionaires like before-mentioned Tim Cook (Apple), also Eric Schmidt (Google), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft). Even Warren Buffet technically wasn’t a founder of Berkshire Hathaway, he acquired it step by step because of his exceptional skills in investments.
I hope this article can help you guys to look at your goals and career paths from a different angle of your talents. It is still important to work hard and be dedicated to your goals, but how exactly you will allocate your efforts depends only on you — do it wisely, listen to yourself and good luck!
P.S.
You also can connect with me on the Facebook blog or LinkedIn, where I regularly post some AI articles or news that are too short for Medium and Instagram for some more personal content. If you’re looking forward to becoming an AI entrepreneur and solve challenging problems, ping Neurons Lab, we are partnering up with top-class AI freelancers :)
