> As if seeing the problems and being given the authority to solve them always came in pairs.
My point is that there's no value in seeing the problems if you can't or won't do anything about them. Like he seems to want to be congratulated/rewarded/hired for being able to blame other people for the failure of the places he previously worked at.
He fixed some specific DBA/sysadmin-ey problems. That matters, but less than you might think. He didn't fix the underlying problems in those cases or the more important problems that he identifies.
> Yet, the company still said they “don’t need to hire people with experience because everything is cloud native so anybody can just figure things out.” — This company tolerated a year of 80 hour data imports because “cloud native” means “experience doesn’t matter” and they didn’t have anybody in the entire company to even detect the problem because “only product features matter, we don’t want to hire low value sysadmins.”
> It’s not my fault companies fail though. I try to help, but when VC brain disease runs all companies into the ground instead of prioritizing building good products on high performance platforms, there’s only so much you can do before leaving dying companies (then repeat at the next dying company forever?).
> I’ve seen companies making $5 million a month in revenue just evaporate over 3 years because their original idea falls out of popularity and the executives refuse to adapt to better ideas. I’ve seen companies go from a billion in funding to being sold for parts because the CEO is too busy buying horses to keep his wife happy instead of actually running the company. I’ve seen companies just give up and get acquired by some big tech because the CEO was offered a personal $100 million gift when he agrees to the acquisition, then 90% of the company is let go after the acquisition. Feels great to work forever on the zero-reward side of a winner-take-most-but-the-winner-aint-you professional economy.
> I don’t know about you, but I care about company structure, product issues, platform scalability and reliability, customer usability, developer usability, performance, legal compliance, security, corporate scalability, and team cohesion all at the same time.
Caring is good but only if you care about the stuff that matters. At some point, yeah, if the last 5 companies you worked for died and you're making a point of selling yourself as someone who cares about the important stuff, then either you're not as good at identifying what's important as you think you are, or you're ineffective at actually fixing the problems you've identified. Which is naturally not going to get you hired.
> it looks like I am a full time architecture-only, no-product-value person, but it’s only because...
There's only so much "it's only because..." that people will look past.
My guess is you're one of the interviewers/employees he was talking about in the article.