Sam Altman went from "I'm doing this because I love it" to proposing to receive 7% equity in the for-profit entity in a matter of months.
Now he calls out researchers leaving for greener pastures as mercenaries while the echo of "OpenAI is nothing without its people" hasn't faded.
Catholic churches are quite conservative in their own ways, primarily set up by Christian missionaries with the mandate to convert.
The english language helped, sure, but it's the lack of opportunities in their own state and the higher education levels that created the conditions for the immigration to Middle East. Kerala also had a long history of trade with Arabs.
Yes, there is restriction on beef consumption in India but nobody protests for pork while in the middle east - it's all about which side the bread is buttered.
Elon Musk's Trump like behaviour - for e.g. poll regarding Twitter HQ, edit button, openly discussing product ideas etc would have definitely spooked Twitter. This would have led to serious talk and conditions that he should restrain what he puts out as a board member - which probably wasn't worth the trade-off for Musk.
Can you be a "VP of Sales" without ever doing any sales? Can you be a head chef without ever cooking?
Sure, you can be immensely impactful being a people leader and a conduit between business and tech without ever having written any code. But you can't call yourself CTO if you haven't written any software yourself without diluting the meaning of the title to homeopathic levels.
Agreed, experience in the field is a must. But do they need to keep coding, especially in the company? No, I think that's an anti-pattern. They should be busy with getting the business and the tech aligned, shaping culture, shaping hiring and coaching other tech leaders.
Courage to be Disliked - it's helped me put different life problems in perspective.
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World - This has been on my bookshelf for a long time, I just picked it up recently, looking for meaning after witnessing covid devastation around. Just a couple chapters in, but it is a really inspiring book.
Product companies ideally optimise for outcome (growth/delight/adoption metrics).
Consulting companies tend to optimise for output (delivering on time, code quality, reported bug counts, number of stories, sprint velocity etc.)
A full time product engineer has more skin in the game and freedom to work across the stack while consultants might be restricted to non-prod environments and therefore limited access to infra/devops work and prod support/troubleshooting. YMMV.
There is a huge learning in supporting what you build and not getting that experience can be a limitation in consulting.
However consulting offers you the opportunity to work across domains, tech stacks, work with new people, travel etc every 1-2 years whereas in product companies a commitment of 2-3+ years is desirable.
Finally, it boils down to quality of the group of people you are going to work with. A consulting firm with higher density of talent would be more interesting than a mediocre product team.
