[quote=svelte][quote=Coronita]
Your concerns about code stealing, licensing, etc are overblown. The code isnt important enough or revolutionary enough to be worth stealing in most of these fintech startups….and you wont be able to tell if you are the guy obtaining the code from the the cheaper outsourced labor, do the code review, and the gitlab/github checkin, which you would do if you were trying to pass if off as your own code…at these fintech startups, no one gives a shit… thats why these people can get away with what they are doing…its one of the reasons why i got out of these fintech startup bay area pushes i generation ago. the goal is short term exit strategy and to cash in…different for the few of us that are in the game trying to make a difference, where we use our rental income to pay the bills so we can try to find an opportunity we enjoy doing … hopefully ill get there one day.[/quote]

Yeah that sounds pretty unrewarding…prototype code to entice investment. There was a point in my career about 10 years in when I realized that none of the code I had written was still in use – none! It was kind of depressing.

After that my batting average was much better, but looking at the shelf life of most code it is only 5-10 years in my experience. Then it gets replaced. If it doesn’t get replaced, it really falls into the “technical debt” category.[/quote]

Svelte. At this one large company. I think I worked on a total of 3 versions of a licensing/DRM/subscription system.. When I left that big company after doing 2 tours, they were still working on licensing/drm/subscription. And 2-3 years after when I met up with the architects and senior managers…Guess what they were working on still? Yup licensing/drm/subscription.

I don’t know, but for a lot of engineers. I think it’s the awesome situation to be in. I mean think about it. You can design/architect/implement all this technology using the latest and greatest technology and tools (I mean for god sake, we were spending $10-20k on a hardware web services accelerators that no one else was using and willing to spend money on). And after 1 year of development, the system for (political and not technical reasons) doesn’t get used, so no engineer has to stay up in war room duties to triage and fix production issues…And then the next year, when the political winds change, a brand new architecture and tools, technology, to do the same exact thing, that somehow is better than the previous version (when none of the learnings of the previous iteration went into the current iteration), only for that new “better” system get shelved for political reasons 1 year later… I love the efficiencies of big bureaucratic US companies. And you wonder why these companies can only afford to give their workerbees 1-3% COLA raises. lol….

At least with the startups, there’s a clear goal and exit strategy. Get bought or go IPO and collect money…Works when you are young and don’t care. I’d highly recommend it to those who are in the 20ies and early 30ies. And hopefully you can make enough dough to do what you really want to do by the time you’re in your mid 30ies.