Great talk by a netflix employee.
EDIT: The video got taken down, I found it again from someone else. I’m gonna go ahead and save this.
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It would seem Randall has been listening to Andrew Wulf and stolen his stories.
Not sure how Randall became a senior dev in three years.
I will say after my programming career, moving into management was the best decision I ever made, and if I had my time over I wouldn’t have taken the CS route to begin with.
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Shut the front door and get out of town, really? You like managing people better than coding?(assuming you were a coder)
I can’t speak for the guys personal experience level, but the concept of defining the inherently different tasks of a software firm under different words is valid and the presentation, while not super info dense, is watchable.
@RastaFan We like to think of writing code as power typing a solution to a problem, and thats empowering but not true.
Managing doesn’t just mean being a prick that tells people what to do, it can mean focusing on the bigger picture and making decisions for a project that determines its direction instead of being bogged down in the detail. It can mean getting more money than you where previously by making calls yourself you previously spent twice as long trying to convince your boss was the correct way.
Of course it can also suck. You can be forced that guy who has to tow the companies line at the expense of relationships with employees. You’ll much more often be damed if you do and damed if you don’t, and its typically more stressful the higher in the food chain you go, often with less instant gratifications such as direct praise for work well done, and more exposure to the hard calls like laying off staff. Even tiny things, like that a great many people can’t truly every be loose in front of the boss, and you have higher representation in public figure even when not at work, so you will leave work functions early and sober.
So while I think we all are proud of personal work, and love to complain about everything else work related, management isn’t that bad. Turns out most people would agree, since if offered the promotion they take it, even if the money is only very marginally more.
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Could you point me in a direction to read up on this further?
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Andrew Wulf runs “thecodist” blog which is where I drew the comparison of Wulf’s articles and Randall’s presentation. I wouldn’t take anything away from the obvious skill of Randall though. He is clearly a genius and lucky to be working amongst some of the brightest minds in the industry.
You may also want to check out articles from Jeff Atwood (stackoverflow founder), Peter Welch (from still drinking), and James Mickens (CS lecturer). There’s plenty of great information and discussion from experienced software engineers out there.
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Thanks for sharing! 
Thanks for the sharing.
The video is very interesting and I think it has a very good point.