{"id":579,"date":"2010-10-29T20:41:25","date_gmt":"2010-10-30T03:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/?p=579"},"modified":"2010-10-29T20:41:25","modified_gmt":"2010-10-30T03:41:25","slug":"paul-grahams-upwind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/paul-grahams-upwind\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Graham’s Upwind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

As a new reader of HN<\/a>, I was poking around PG<\/a>\u2019s site and this blurb<\/a> really stood out to me:<\/p>\n

I don’t think people consciously realize this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind. The market price for that kind of work is higher because it gives you fewer options for the future. A job that lets you work on exciting new stuff will tend to pay less, because part of the compensation is in the form of the new skills you’ll learn.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

PG’s essays are usually good, insightful reads, but this blurb just jumped out at me.<\/p>\n

His concept of Upwind vs Downwind is about maximizing your potential. If you’re upwind, you have many possible paths forward (since you haven’t specialized yourself into a niche). While you’re downwind, you don’t have as many doors open to you, but you should be making the big bucks.<\/p>\n

I find myself in an “other” category, since I don’t consider myself in a high potential upwind or highly compensated downwind position. I’m downwind yet I’m making peanuts. My solution to this is to gradually get upwind by expanding my skills (reading about UXD<\/a> and RoR<\/a>) over time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a new reader of HN, I was poking around PG\u2019s site and this blurb really stood out to me: I don’t think people consciously realize this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind. The market price for that kind of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[331,328,327,324,325,330,329,323,326],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-compensation","tag-hackernews","tag-hn","tag-paul-graham","tag-pg","tag-potential","tag-skills","tag-upwind","tag-yc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rexfeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}