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Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

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Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#1

Post by amazonavocado »

People who say they don't do programming outside of work hours, I'm kind of surprised at them. I was thinking that I needed to in order to stay on top with marketable skills. But if you don't make software on the side outside of work hours, how do you manage your career in programming so you don't fall off the rails?

Were you just lucky enough to get into the right jobs that keep you doing work that is highly in demand for the moment? Looking back, I kinda wish I started my career with a slow-moving Java or .NET enterprise work because, although not being very sexy, it is comparatively stable to front end web development.

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#2

Post by draw_down »

Well, the tools I learned to use are not just evaporating. They are still in use at many places and will be for the near term future. New things I tend to learn on the job. (Some examples: react hooks, webpack & build tooling, graphql)

I guess we are now entering into a new world, so we will see. But beside that, there is so much demand and opportunity, I don’t see why I should fear for my career. What are “the rails” and what does falling off them look like?

The other thing is, new stuff tends to just be repackaging of old stuff. Once you’ve seen a couple cycles of this you stop worrying about it.

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#3

Post by non-entity »

Many people I know like this found a stable job in government or a large corporation and for the most part states put there. The may have had a few other jobs, but like you mention it's all enterprise stuff which moves slow enough.

They also have tend to have different motivations, whether that be a family or unrelated hobbies.

Tbh sometimes I envy people like this and sometimes I dont.

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#4

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

> "I was thinking that I needed to in order to stay on top with marketable skills."

These people are fine not being on top and are consciously or unconsciously accepting the risk of falling off the rails. The risks have been fairly low for the past decade or so since software's role has just kept growing and growing in society and, at least for the foreseeable future, that growth doesn't seem likely to slow significantly.

Not a strategy I'd pursue but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable bet.

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#5

Post by wmichelin »

You can take risks on the job and learn as you go. If you have a good manager they will take your career goals into mind when deciding what you are doing on a per-sprint basis.

A great manager will allocate sprint points to you exploring a new area of technology as long as you can somehow realize value for the business as a result of that exploration.

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#6

Post by scarface74 »

You kind of hit the nail on the head. If you don’t want to constantly be on the treadmill, don’t focus on the front end. The further down the stack you go, the slower technology moves and the easier it is to stay relevant.

Besides, just from looking around, front end pays less and it’s easy for most companies to find cheap “good enough” front end developers.

As far as being “lucky”, it’s not luck. If I see my employer’s stack falling behind the market, it’s time to jump ship. Why would I work at a company all day and then come home at night trying to keep myself marketable instead of just changing jobs?

There is usually a job out there where the “must haves” are $old_tech and the “nice to haves” are $new_tech, rinse and repeat.

You could always take the r/cscareerquestions tact and “learn leetCode and work for a FAANG” (note sarcasm).

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#7

Post by scarface74 »

non-entity wrote: post #3

Many people I know like this found a stable job in government or a large corporation and for the most part states put there. The may have had a few other jobs, but like you mention it's all enterprise stuff which moves slow enough. They also have tend to have different motivations, whether that be a family or unrelated hobbies. Tbh sometimes I envy people like this and sometimes I dont.

That’s fine until the large corporation lays them off, they find their skillset is not marketable and then they start whining about “ageism”. (I’m in my mid 40’s and I’m still a developer FWIW)

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#8

Post by indemnity »

non-entity wrote: post #3

Many people I know like this found a stable job in government or a large corporation and for the most part states put there. The may have had a few other jobs, but like you mention it's all enterprise stuff which moves slow enough. They also have tend to have different motivations, whether that be a family or unrelated hobbies. Tbh sometimes I envy people like this and sometimes I dont.

I’m kind of like this... been at current employer around 8 years.

Motivation: very strictly 9-5 which is great for my toddler kids and personal side interests and being able to keep current even if employer is boring tech. Healthy compensation means I will be mortgage free in 2 years.

Profitable large company that will easily weather the coming storms (have always been tight with budgets), and not worried about layoffs since in growing + future investment part of company.

If it all goes to shit, once I own my house outright I don’t care, since wife owns a recession proof revenue producing business on which we can survive if I need to retool (can’t survive on only that while we have a mortgage payment on solely that income tho).

Many reasons for something like this.

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#9

Post by mrfusion »

scarface74 wrote: post #6

You kind of hit the nail on the head. If you don’t want to constantly be on the treadmill, don’t focus on the front end. The further down the stack you go, the slower technology moves and the easier it is to stay relevant. Besides, just from looking around, front end pays less and it’s easy for most companies to find cheap “good enough” front end developers. As far as being “lucky”, it’s not luck. If I see my employe…

Why does the front end change faster?

Re: Ask HN: If you only do programming at work, how do you manage your career?

#10

Post by _bxg1 »

scarface74 wrote: post #6

You kind of hit the nail on the head. If you don’t want to constantly be on the treadmill, don’t focus on the front end. The further down the stack you go, the slower technology moves and the easier it is to stay relevant. Besides, just from looking around, front end pays less and it’s easy for most companies to find cheap “good enough” front end developers. As far as being “lucky”, it’s not luck. If I see my employe…

> The further down the stack you go, the slower technology moves and the easier it is to stay relevant.

I don't think this can quite be generalized. Front-end web certainly moves the fastest, but does Windows application development move faster than lightweight microservices? I doubt it.

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