261–270 of 311 posts
Age discrimination is real. If you choose a programming career and don't enter management, then when you are 40+ you might find that you have trouble getting hired for a decent paying job, even if the industry otherwise appears to be booming. When I was studying CS 25 years ago I didn't even think about the age problem. Even if I had, it would not have seemed real at that time, but its real now. That said, I don't kn…
Age discrimination is real. If you choose a programming career and don't enter management, then when you are 40+ you might find that you have trouble getting hired for a decent paying job, even if the industry otherwise appears to be booming. When I was studying CS 25 years ago I didn't even think about the age problem. Even if I had, it would not have seemed real at that time, but its real now. That said, I don't kn…
I am surrounded by talented people over 40, none of whom had problems finding a decently paying job.
I am aware that there's some level of survivor bias here, bad or mediocre developers have dropped along the way.
To be fair those developers tend to work anyway in places that pays less and on not top-of-the-line products.
Note that this is not the situation in CS, everyone thinks CS is a good career but luckily for us not a lot of them can actually try it out.
CS is tough, your average next door manicurist can't take a short evening course and become a successful developer. Even smart doctors, accountants or lawyers are not guaranteed to be decent developers or even survive the basic education.
I'll throw this advice in because it's served me well in my career. Somewhat related. 1) You can be a big fish in a big pond with other big fish (eg FAANG). Or you can be a big fish in a pond with small fish (think like a regional grocery chain). Try both to see which makes you happier. There are tradeoffs in both cases. 2) Your boss and the people you work with (ie your local context) is often a much stronger determ…
Where and how do you find these kind of jobs? Anyone I know who works in this kind of non-tech company hates it because it's a cost center and they get all the negative side of our profession (no budget for anything, outdated/poor tools, unreasonable expectations and deadlines, and no respect from the rest of the org overall)
The industry survived. It will also survive a new batch of people getting into it for money. Of course a larger supply of labour may depress salaries somewhat in a free market, but I don't think salaries are really a free market; it's more about who has enough power to leverage a higher salary.
In any case, there's plenty of new stuff to be done with computers, and I think someone doing it for the love of it has a bigger chance of finding those things than people looking for the well-trodden, well-paying path.
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> Also what meaningful work can you really get done in 3 months? It really depends on where you are and how seriously they take their interns. I've seen interns accomplish a fair amount in 3 months where I work (Mozilla). As a concrete example, we had an intern propose and implement a new devtools feature that lets you see what your site design looks like to users with various visual impairments. Still depending on w…
> As a concrete example, we had an intern propose and implement a new devtools feature that lets you see what your site design looks like to users with various visual impairments. That sounds like an interesting feature, where do I find it?
2) Select the "Accessibility" panel. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Accessibility...
3) In Firefox 70 or newer, if WebRender is enabled, there will be a "Simulate" menu next to the "Check for Issues" menu. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Accessibility... for details. Note that WebRender is not enabled across the board yet, so you may need to force-enable it, depending on your operating system and graphics card, to use this tool.
It's really not a career path you should get into if you're just in it for the money. Your friends will probably wash out within 3-5 years after they figure out they're not actually interested in software engineering.
Disagree. I don't care about CS at all. Still like the work, but wouldn't do it if it weren't for the money. Am I good at SE? No. But I went from terrible to average in a period of 4 years and am now earning 6 figures. All without side projects or unpaid learning.
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I'm not sure that's a saying outside of agriculture.
It was on HN that I first heard it. I'm not sure it is a saying within agriculture. We take for granted the advanced technology that we get to play with.
It seems like an interesting idea.
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I focus on myself. Am I better than I was yesterday? Three years ago? Good. Keep going. We're not like doctors. There is no capital-P professional guild setting the bar for practitioners of software engineering. There are engineering guilds that recognize software development as a discipline that will accredit you if you meet their requirements and pay their dues. However it's often not mandatory for you to be accred…
Curious, and being serious here, what problems are you working on and how do you make the world a better place?
On my evenings and weekends, when I'm not unwinding, I'm presently working on Haskell libraries for type-directed data migrations, extending the community fork of Lean to add FFI support, and working on a course in abstract algebra.
Making the world a better place is pretty easy and can start with small things. I like visiting some of our customer factories and meeting the people who use our software. It makes my day to hear their feedback and know that it's making a difference for them.