Founders, Employees, and Creators 🎭
Thoughts and learnings about the various professional experiences I have had so far.
Hey everyone — this is a more personal piece than usual, where I reflect on the various professional experiences I have had so far, and the main differences between them.
I published some of these on Refactoring in the past and now I am writing an updated version because, in recent times, it seems I have got more friends than usual getting into sabbaticals, radical career changes, and similar.
It might be AI, it might be the market, I don’t know. But I recognize some of that struggle from times in my life where I made hard calls, which sometimes worked, sometimes not.
Even more so, at various points in my life people were puzzled about what I did for a living. There are plenty of myths and misconceptions about the work of founders, creators, and even regular employees. I have friends in all categories, and I have found that when people build a strong identity around some role, they tend to become defensive and skeptic of the other ones.
So this piece should dispel some of such myths, while also shedding light on parts that I believe we don’t talk about enough.
Let’s go!
🙋♂️ About me
My career so far has been made up of three main experiences:
I have been co-founder and CTO of Wanderio for 8 years — I raised ~$4M in Italy, grew a 20-ish people team, and served 25M+ customers.
I have been Head of Engineering at Translated for about one year — a larger, 150-people tech company working with AI and translation services.
I am now a full time creator / writer at Refactoring and Hybrid Hacker — the very newsletter you are reading right now.
These experiences were all very different one from another, both in ways I expected, and others that I didn’t. Also, I didn’t plan for things to look like this. They pretty much unfolded in their own way, and I hope I will be able to connect the dots backwards, one day.
I am extremely grateful for having experiences that are so diverse. Today, I feel I am more equipped to make the right calls for my life, and I also have a clearer picture of what I want to achieve and the lifestyle I desire.
The goal of this article is to pass you some of such learnings that have been important and counterintuitive to me.
🍀 The Four Quadrants
There are infinite ways to dissect the differences between jobs.
I have found that a useful one to reflect on what the lifestyle is like and what’s the best for you, is based on two coordinates:
🍻 Community — team-based work vs individual work
🏎️ Autonomy — high autonomy vs low autonomy
This separation is clear to me now. I understand why such qualities matter to me, and why others don’t, but it hasn’t always been like this.
When I was younger, I was obsessed with impact. As a founder, when people asked me what I loved about startups, I always replied: impact!
But what is impact, really?
Impact is our idea of how much our work matters. I argue that in most cases, this idea shouldn’t be trusted.
🔮 Impact is a fallacy
Impact is unreliable for two main reasons: it is hard to measure, and it is subjective: