51–60 of 93 posts
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This holds up in my recent search. I just apply to these anyway, because what they define as senior might be totally different between companies.
Yeah, most of the "senior" positions I see state that they want 5 or so years experience.
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Am a self starting generalist. Every company I've worked for has desperately tried to beat it out of me. They think they want this but what they actually want is someone who will turn pre-chewed tickets into code on whatever platform they have without attempting to fix underlying issues as they identify them.
I used to think like this, but what I ultimately realized was that it's pretty arrogant for an individual contributor to think they know best what the user wants. Once I realized that, it made a lot more sense why I wasn't (and shouldn't!) be the one calling the shots on priority, UX, tempo. Even for things like tech debt, it really needs to be baked into the ability to deliver new value to a customer or it's very of…
Corporate almost always wants faster/better/more agile/higher reuse and you see that in postings/interviews but the PMs/Principle types always dig a moat to prevent anything from moving down to Seniors and lower.
The hardest "engineer" to find "nowadays" is the same as it was 10, 20, 40, 100 years ago: the one who can communicate what [s]he wants to do in a way that non-engineers can grok And, the flipside of that: the one who can take what [s]he is given in magic, hand-waving, bafflegab statements from non-engineers and convert it into something someone else can actually use If you can communicate to and understand from othe…
That's not my experience. I'm consistently told that communication is my strong point, that I'm good at interpreting statements into wanted functionality, and that my professional opinions are very thorough and well-thought out. I'm told I'm slow. When I do code screens, usually in a language that I have limited experience in due to my diverse background in technologies, I don't get the job because others are faster.
I'm a diesel. But that's not what gets you through jobinterviews nowadays.
Self-starting generalists
Am a self starting generalist. Every company I've worked for has desperately tried to beat it out of me. They think they want this but what they actually want is someone who will turn pre-chewed tickets into code on whatever platform they have without attempting to fix underlying issues as they identify them.
No deadlines, nearly no meetings, and definitely no pre-chewed tickets. Write your own spec and then ship it (all with help from team mates ofc).
I'm pretty confident that we're not the only company that works like this.
What I think I mean is, if you're appalled by employers that treat people like replaceable cogs, then it might be worth your while to find an employer that doesn't :-)
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Am a self starting generalist. Every company I've worked for has desperately tried to beat it out of me. They think they want this but what they actually want is someone who will turn pre-chewed tickets into code on whatever platform they have without attempting to fix underlying issues as they identify them.
Well, we're hiring :-) https://talkjs.com/jobs No deadlines, nearly no meetings, and definitely no pre-chewed tickets. Write your own spec and then ship it (all with help from team mates ofc). I'm pretty confident that we're not the only company that works like this. What I think I mean is, if you're appalled by employers that treat people like replaceable cogs, then it might be worth your while to find an employer t…
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Well, we're hiring :-) https://talkjs.com/jobs No deadlines, nearly no meetings, and definitely no pre-chewed tickets. Write your own spec and then ship it (all with help from team mates ofc). I'm pretty confident that we're not the only company that works like this. What I think I mean is, if you're appalled by employers that treat people like replaceable cogs, then it might be worth your while to find an employer t…
Very much appreciate that, though I'm a full stack embedded dev (EDA/c/++/rust/py etc).
I used to work in embedded software too. At the risk of sounding arrogant, it is my experience that embedded devs learn the web stack a lot faster & more thoroughly than vice versa. So should you at any point be interested in switching to web/mobile tech then be sure to get in touch.
And, totally unrelated, when I did embedded software, by far the coolest job I had was at a hardware startup. We were 9 people in a room making a lithography machine (a machine that makes chips) that could compete with the market leader's 20 year old junk. Said old junk was getting, well, old and broken, so we were trying to fill that demand gap.
I think at least half the team was working well outside their usual skillset at any point in time. It was super frustrating for people who considered themselves specialists and awesome for the rest. I learned a lot there about what a workplace where generalists thrive looks like.
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> Converting from Business people's idiot speak to actual technical spec Isn't that what a.Business Analyst does?
That's my belief. At my company we don't have them (or I would be applying to those roles). It's seems most companies know they can save money by combining that with the developer role. I don't see postings for them.
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I used to think like this, but what I ultimately realized was that it's pretty arrogant for an individual contributor to think they know best what the user wants. Once I realized that, it made a lot more sense why I wasn't (and shouldn't!) be the one calling the shots on priority, UX, tempo. Even for things like tech debt, it really needs to be baked into the ability to deliver new value to a customer or it's very of…
You can't be a one man band, but if the organisation supports it, you can achieve both. In my experience, it doesn't need to be a trade off. We can get close to the users and program to your hearts content. We need the right company and environment to want to invest in that for us. There's a great loop we can get into by doing things like offering demos of new features to clients weekly or bi-weekly. What I've seen h…
I personally think this is the future, and the myth of the introverted software developer who comes up for air to say 5 words in a standup is well past its expiration date, but a lot of people cling to that pretty strongly, so I expect people will prefer to code in dysfunctional teams that aren't well connected to their users for years to come.
The hardest "engineer" to find "nowadays" is the same as it was 10, 20, 40, 100 years ago: the one who can communicate what [s]he wants to do in a way that non-engineers can grok And, the flipside of that: the one who can take what [s]he is given in magic, hand-waving, bafflegab statements from non-engineers and convert it into something someone else can actually use If you can communicate to and understand from othe…
The hardest "engineer" to find "nowadays" is the same as it was 10, 20, 40, 100 years ago: the one who can communicate what [s]he wants to do in a way that non-engineers can grok And, the flipside of that: the one who can take what [s]he is given in magic, hand-waving, bafflegab statements from non-engineers and convert it into something someone else can actually use If you can communicate to and understand from othe…
I disagree. The hiring process is never interested in your version of the hardest engineer to find.
It's 1. pedigree then 2. "pass this coding challenge" then 3. some soft assessment of how "down for the cause" you are (will you work extremely hard and not quit so easily).
I haven't seen an exception, and I've interviewed widely and been the interviewer at multiple places (given a rubric of what to assess).