Skip to main content

🧠 Why I Study DS&A (Even After Doing Everything)

I should be making between $600K and $2M a year.
I’m making $120K.

That’s not imposter syndrome. That’s math.

I’ve built internal tools, launched production systems, scaled APIs, mentored junior engineers, and led architecture for government SaaS platforms. I’ve worked across defense, pharma, legal, retail, and consumer staples. Frontend. Backend. DevOps. OLTP. OLAP. CRUD. Realtime. Event-driven pipelines. CLI tools. I’ve done it.

And yet — to get what I’m worth?
I still have to pass a whiteboard test.

🎯 Skill and Pay Are Completely Decoupled​

You can have world-class skill and still be underpaid, under-leveled, or flat-out invisible.
That’s not just a tech industry problem — it’s a universal one.

Look at Jett and Hunter Lawrence. They didn’t stay in Australia and hope to be noticed.
Their family moved to Europe, then leveraged relationships to get in front of the right people. Not because they weren’t already skilled — but because being the best in the wrong market pays nothing.

They could have done all the same training and never made a dollar.

DS&A → FAANG → Visibility + Compensation
No DS&A → Stay local → Be world-class, underpaid, and unnoticed

🧠 DS&A Isn’t the Goal — It’s the Lever​

I don’t study DS&A because I think it defines me.
I study it because it’s the fastest path to unlock comp and credibility at the scale that matches what I’ve already done.

The other option is building a startup from scratch, but that has less guarantee for returns... this is the whole reason VC's place so many bets.

Additionally, you might spend 6 months building and marketing an idea, only to decide it has a lower chance of reaching reasonable DAUs/MAUs with the runway you have v. another less devloped idea... so you pivot to building and marketing the other thing. This entire time you are burning marketing dollars, living expenses, and giving up the potential income that you would otherwise be making.

Compared to that, DS&A is practically free.

You don’t give up equity.
You don’t burn years of runway.
You trade focused study time for interviews that open the next tier of options.

I study DS&A not to get a job. I study it because it’s leverage.

💸 Why Not Just Start a Startup Now?​

I’ve considered it — and I will eventually. I’ve already made enough from a handful of well-timed crypto plays to bootstrap something solo for a few years: $300K–$500K in optionality, depending on how you count.

But I'd rather stack the deck first.

A couple years at FAANG doesn’t just give me cash — it gives me:

  • Resume equity
  • Scale experience
  • A 7-figure runway
  • The option to hire, not hustle alone

It’s not that I’m not ready to build.
I’m just optimizing for freedom and firepower once I do.

Startups burn capital.
DS&A burns time.
Right now, time is cheaper.

🧪 I’ve Failed Enough to Learn What Works​

A lot of my early ideas and projects didn’t go the way I wanted.

I tried frontend-first. Result: scope creep, no traction.
I chose Excel because that’s what finance people used — only to realize it wasn’t built to handle balance sheets for every company since inception.
I pushed tools I thought were useful before validating the actual workflow.

But here’s the difference:
I didn’t just move on. I documented everything.

Over time, those experiments turned into something reliable. Not a gut feeling — a set of well-informed defaults, grounded in actual attempts, not theory.

I’m not saying I have it all figured out. I’m saying I’ve failed enough times with intention that my current decisions are noticeably better.

This isn’t intuition — it’s a reference system built from experience.

🌀 Full Circle​

I remember back in 2011, trying to build this project called Pips.
I read about how “tables are related” and didn't get it.

I didn’t know what a foreign key was. I had no clue how databases worked.

Fast forward: I’ve built polymorphic bridge tables, designed multi-role permission systems, and debugged real production chaos across industries.

But the growth isn’t just technical.

It’s in how I think, in the processes I've devleoped.

So yeah — I’m grinding DS&A.

Not because I’m junior.
Because I know what comes next.
And I’m making damn sure I walk into that phase with options.

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first!