That's true to a point. But most companies aren't willing to treat their top talent well enough to keep them. There comes a time when running your own business is less headache than dealing with a bureaucracy, and they go do that.

But again, I said 'most companies'. Some of them have a very clear view of the situation and make sure that talent is happy and unwilling to move to another company, let alone start their own. And I think there are more of those companies all the time.

And to be fair to the rest, they probably can't afford it.

My experience has been that top technical talent doesn't want to focus on non-technical things, like finding a new job, or even maximizing their income as an employee, so I think keeping them happy has more to do with how you feed them technical challenges and how much freedom you give them (and how you give them that freedom) and how valued they feel than with how much you pay them. I mean, if you pay them so little that it's a problem, they will deal with that problem, but after that? yeah, I don't think that compensation is as important as you say.

My experience has been that the people who really focus on maximizing the money are folks like me; I mean, I'm no idiot, but I'm certainly nowhere near the best of the best technically. And even me, I'll choose freedom over maximizing my short-run income.

Totally agree with you. Sometimes I dream a bit about having my own company, but when I look at the hassles the owners of my 3 customer companies have, I am grateful that I get to work with 3 groups of talented and interesting people, potentially learn 3 times as much on the job, not as many hassles, and have a "diversified" work base. I won't get rich consulting but I still count my blessings.

You seem to be saying that "the best technical people", because they are so good technically, are, then, necessarily less good than others at "business/social skills".

It's an old myth used by people without technical expertise to put down technical people. The put down is quite general with a cute twist: The technical expert is painted as good ONLY at the technical topics and is poor at EVERYTHING else including even ordering lunch. It's just a put down to win in competition within the organization. The usual way to avoid such a put down is to 'fit in', 'go along', and 'don't stand out'.

BELIEVE me, becoming a technical expert does not somehow ruin a brain for other work.

It is true that some technical experts don't bother with 'social', etc., but the issue is desire and not ability.

I know it doesn't ruin a brain for other work. I'm a technical person who later in life learned some business and social skills.

But you know what? I'd be a better technical person today if I took the effort I put into business and social skills and instead put that effort into becoming a better technical person. And I'm never going to be as good of a social person as someone with similar innate ability who started seriously practicing at an earlier age.

If you can win in competition within your organization through putting down other people, your organization has bigger problems. I suggest finding a new job, or, as the article says, starting your own company.

"If you can win in competition within your organization through putting down other people, your organization has bigger problems."

You say this as if it were rare or unexpected! If so, then you are missing the weight of what you said! Once a company, or nearly any organization, gets big and old, it's nearly standard that the organization becomes arrogant, inwardly directed, and process oriented, has big cases of middle management goal subordination, and has each person fighting with others down the hall instead of the competition outside the building. Or, people go to work, work their tails off, stay busy, busy, busy, put in long hours, come home dead tired and frustrated, and the organization accomplishes next to nothing because all the effort is lost in internal mud wrestling.

The solution mostly is not to 'find a new job' because nearly all organizations of any size are like this.

Yes, the solution is to start your own company.

This pair of observations is solid now because, really, big organizations in the US -- GE, AT&T, GM, and more -- are dying out due to new technology, small competitors, foreign competition, etc. The US is regressing to the mean of many old world economies of a lot of small companies with little role for big ones.

Once you reach some maturity and begin to understand people, being good 'socially' gets to be simple enough. F'get about the struggles in middle school, high school, and college! So: (1) Have money! If you don't, then JOB ONE is to make some! (2) Stand up straight and be confident! (3) Mostly expect only respect, not loyality or affection. (4) Work to understand the emotions, fears, frustrations, and aspirations of others and, then, don't rub them the wrong way.

For adult women, first on their list is your money: They want to know that you have money enough to support a family and, further, have the competence to make more such money.

For girls in high school, they want to see you as confident and, then, gentle with them, and then perceptive about their emotions. They want affection, often sex, praise, acceptance, approval, and validation of their worth as girls. By late high school and in college the young women move your money to the head of their list of what they want.

That's about it.

Man, reading your comment, my first guess is that you are single and unemployed.

I mean, yeah, okay, that's harsh. but yeah, I also thought that women mostly cared about money... until I gained some experience in the matter. I also thought that people worked hard at large corporations as a matter of course; again, I was disabused of the notion after gaining some experience.

Really, at large corporations? the way to get by is to be good enough that nobody wants to be mean to you (because you might leave and then nobody would be able to do your work) and to not work too hard.

That's how people who are really good at large corporations are compensated. They don't fuck with you and they don't expect a whole lot of work.

who works hard at a large corporation? that's like joining a startup for the job security.

But, you know what? small companies also have drama. At small corporations, if anything, it's harder to avoid the drama. Today is going to be dedicated, mostly, to dealing with drama within my company, oh, and drama it is. Yeah, there's less paperwork when a small company wants to fire someone, but it can still be a really big deal; the work still needs to get done, so I can't solve the drama that way.

"Single"? I was married for years and then she died. I'm not going to get married again.

"Unemployed"? I'm an entrepreneur, not an 'employee'. I've been an employee of several large organizations, all very well known. At one, it was a startup but now is very well known.

Big organizations mostly don't need to get the work done and, thus, usually don't. They mostly don't need to get the work done because the organization has so much momentum that it can get by for years mostly not getting much work done. Getting the work done is not valued. Actually, about the work, next to nothing is valued. Indeed, anyone who tries to do very much becomes a threat to the rest.

People make progress via 'goal subordination', e.g.. forming coalitions that agree to occupy the high end of the ship as the other end sinks.

Large business organizations in the US are dinosaurs on the way to extinction.

The only reasonably promising path to financial security in the US is money in the bank from profits from being an entrepreneur. In particular, it is better to have an electrician's license and be an electrician sole proprietor entrepreneur than to have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and try to work for a large organization.

The big, huge opportunity is exploiting Moore's law, the Internet, cheap storage, the ocean of good infrastructure software, and more as a base to deliver valuable, new information to all the world.

On women, you can believe me now or encounter disasters and believe me later.

Broadly, in the more industrialized countries, the data is overwhelming: Women are grand disasters on the way to extinction. Literally. No doubt. Exactly. Period. E.g., at Wikipedia, read that currently, on average, each women in Finland is having just 1.5 children. Finland did well beating Sweden, the Soviets, and Germany but is losing out to their women. At 1.5 children per woman, Finland is rapidly on the way to extinction.

F'get about Finland: The number of children per woman in all the more industrialized countries is too low to keep up the population.

Net, the women are distracted from concentrating on having children and, thus, are on the way to extinction.

In the past, the women had plenty of children whether they really wanted to or not. Now they have some choices so don't have enough children not to be weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.

Beyond just children, on average the women are grand disasters at forming stable family units. The situation is very much as in the movie 'The Godfather, Part II' where Michael asks his mother if it is possible to lose one's family. His mother says, "You can never lose your family". Well, Michael's father Vito didn't have to worry about that, but Michael did have to worry about it and did lose his family. Michael said, "Times have changed". He was correct about one of the biggest issues in all of the more advanced countries.

So, Vito's wife had a walk-up, cold water flat, likely far too cold, in NYC, and near rags for clothes, and next to nothing else, had three sons and a daughter, and continued to play a solid role in the family for life. Michael's wife had the best luxuries in all of history, two children, aborted a third, and just HATED her husband and marriage and ran away from her marriage. BUMMER. And that has been the story USUALLY not just in that movie but all across the US and all the more developed countries for several decades now.

So, the women are going extinct. If anything is left, necessarily it will be women who are GOOD at being strong limbs on the tree, almost surely GOOD at being wives and mothers. Thus, in the more developed countries, humans are now in by far the fastest and largest change in the human gene pool of at least the last 40,000 years when, say, the genes of Western Europe split from those of Asia and the Americas.

So, it's both large business organizations and women that are going extinct in the US.

So, a man who wants financial security needs to be a successful entrepreneur. Then if he wants a strong family, he needs to make some very special efforts to 'guide' the situation, at least day by day, often hour by hour.

Right: Being an employee in a large organization sucks. And being a husband of the usual woman sucks.

'Feminism' is mostly just the ideology for an excuse for being a weak, sick, or dead limb on the tree. It's not new but goes way back, through women's movements for many decades and to Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew'. Now that ideology is on the way to being extinct.

So, young men: Avoid what is going extinct. Avoid being an employee in a large organization and be an entrepreneur instead. When forming a family, avoid any hint of 'feminism' and be very much in control, often hour by hour.

Got it.

"but my experience is that the best technical people? they don't want the headache."

Exactly. From Alan Kay, Brian Kernighan, Rob Pike, Guido Van Rossum to Linus Torwalds the best technical people could care less about "starting their own company".