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The Insecure Developer

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Re: The Insecure Developer

#31

Post by pbrb »

golergka wrote: post #20
pbrb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for those who don't love it... there are lots of jobs that are not programming, but are still in the industry. Quite a lot of them even pay more than programming! Seek them out. Out of curiosity, what roles do you think pay more than programming? Product? PM?

Technical management. You have to be a good programmer, of course, but it's OK if you like talking to people more than writing code.

Yeah that's what I was thinking - most anything that's going to consistently pay better than a direct development role is still going to require an understanding of programming. Outside of management roles, I've really only seen devops, product, and networking pay more than development (plus variations on these roles, or niche DBA/storage). Even then, it's not consistent, and in at least the devops role, you'll still likely be writing code every day.

Edit: Forgot about sales! I have a neighbor who works from home in sweat pants but makes insane money in tech sales. Though, he has admitted that the easy stuff is drying up.

Re: The Insecure Developer

#32

Post by wtflmaohnisdumb »

mikekchar wrote: post #11

I'm sleepy, so I shouldn't post, but here goes. Confidence is really important for a programmer. Writing good code is very, very difficult. On the other hand, writing terrible code that barely works is not so difficult. There is a pretty big gulf between the two and if you don't have confidence that you can achieve something better, it is unlikely that you will even look. Having said that, our industry is full of a l…

> Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an overwhelming task.

In what world is it an overwhelming task? Maybe I've landed only at amazing companies but nobody is working the full 8 hour workday. There is time to relax and read random slightly interesting technical things as a break. There are pushes to use slightly interesting technical things in your projects (regardless of how useful it is -- because we need to keep our resumes updated!) and most of the time management will allow it.

The hyperbole from software engineers on how hard this piss easy "profession" is, is just FUD and only serves to keep away people with low confidence issues. In other words, what you are doing is not only keeping potential candidates away, but greatly keeping underprivileged candidates away, and it'd be great if you stopped.

Software engineering given it's current state as the wild west is not a difficult profession in the slightest. It's not law, it's not finance, it's not medicine. We work (relatively) short hours for great benefits and have the ability to work from wherever we want on certain days. Your grades don't matter and you don't need to spend days learning anything other than what's tested in an interview setting or used in production.

Passion is overrated and stupid and it mostly comes from privileged people who had the time to fuck around on the computer all day (and execs wanting to exploit the workforce a bit more) -- not realizing that many people can do what they do given time and mentorship.

There are few other jobs that give you more bang for your buck in terms of effort if you're okay with ~200k/yr being your cap.

Re: The Insecure Developer

#33

Post by eutropia »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #26
mikekchar wrote: post #11

I'm sleepy, so I shouldn't post, but here goes. Confidence is really important for a programmer. Writing good code is very, very difficult. On the other hand, writing terrible code that barely works is not so difficult. There is a pretty big gulf between the two and if you don't have confidence that you can achieve something better, it is unlikely that you will even look. Having said that, our industry is full of a l…

>Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an overwhelming task. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to rant on it a bit. There are quite a few high-paying and fast-moving fields. Pretty much everything under medicine or law…

One of the advantages that doctors and lawyers have over us is that their field is no longer nascent. Their professions have existed in some form or another since ancient Greece, and were cornerstones of western society. We programmers have existed barely half a century, so we (rightly or wrongly) don't have that same sort of social gravitas. We also don't necessarily (some of us do) go through specialized graduate education systems to be a part of the field.

I guess I say all that to say is that people trust lawyers and doctors to be professionals. If they say that they need something, such as time to self-improve -- or the right tools, people listen. The respect their profession bestows upon them gives them an amount of personal clout that most of us don't get by virtue of simply being a dev.

Re: The Insecure Developer

#34

Post by zwieback »

I listened to this podcast where they were trying to figure out why some car salesmen sell 2x or 3x the cars of the next best guy on the lot. They found a pattern where the best performers would maybe briefly celebrate a sale and then immediately think "Oh god, I'll never sell another car, gotta get cracking right away." The less successful guys would go back to their buddies and brag, tell stories and go home early.

Insecurity itself isn't necessarily a predictor of failure, it depends on what you turn it into.

Re: The Insecure Developer

#35

Post by Clubber »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #26
mikekchar wrote: post #11

I'm sleepy, so I shouldn't post, but here goes. Confidence is really important for a programmer. Writing good code is very, very difficult. On the other hand, writing terrible code that barely works is not so difficult. There is a pretty big gulf between the two and if you don't have confidence that you can achieve something better, it is unlikely that you will even look. Having said that, our industry is full of a l…

>Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an overwhelming task. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to rant on it a bit. There are quite a few high-paying and fast-moving fields. Pretty much everything under medicine or law…

>I have guesses on the causes of this industry-wide unwillingness to train

My current theory is it's at least somewhat a result of unions losing power. A union's strategy is to have as many people employed for as long as possible, so it's inherently a long term strategy. The better the company does long term, the better the union members are. I would say unions are the champions of long term strategy for self preservation. If the company goes out of business, all the union members are out of jobs.

Executives are more short term thinkers today. They want quarterly results and they have incentives based on those results (both quarterly and annual) and almost no long term results outside of accumulation of short term incentives. Executives also have the notorious golden parachutes which further shields them from the personal costs of short term thinking. This of course rewards short term thinking rather than long term thinking.

Training is a long term investment, not a short term investment. Short term thinkers want to find someone who will 'hit the ground running,' as I've sure you've heard. Ideally that's what anyone would want. The trouble is, that rarely happens once, much less for an entire team. Short term thinkers can't think outside of that strategy and therefore, we are where we are.

Re: The Insecure Developer

#36

Post by darioush »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #26
mikekchar wrote: post #11

I'm sleepy, so I shouldn't post, but here goes. Confidence is really important for a programmer. Writing good code is very, very difficult. On the other hand, writing terrible code that barely works is not so difficult. There is a pretty big gulf between the two and if you don't have confidence that you can achieve something better, it is unlikely that you will even look. Having said that, our industry is full of a l…

>Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an overwhelming task. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to rant on it a bit. There are quite a few high-paying and fast-moving fields. Pretty much everything under medicine or law…

Every job I've had and encourages engineers to have reading groups, on any topic they want. It's also my experience that most people ignore these opportunities Is this also what others see?

Some reasons I can think are people: - don't want any more meetings; - are bad at having a merit driven discussion

Re: The Insecure Developer

#37

Post by steven777400 »

jackhack wrote: post #18
Xoros wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it means that he was not "good enough" for the multiple technologies they use. Like just in one language but not all they use. Pretty dumb at the end if you ask me.

Then the hiring firm is a group of fools best avoided. Tools change like fashion. What is "hot" today will be nearly frowned on in 5 years and forgotten in a decade or so. In 20 years the fundamentals still matter, the tools, not so much (Pascal? Powerbuilder? Win32 in C?) A smart developer can learn any tool. Hire for aptitude, not today's toolset.

I agree. Of course, there is a "spin-up" time and we prefer to select the competent candidate with skill in our tools vs the competent candidate with skill in a different tool; but absolutely a competent developer should be able to adapt to any environment.

Interviews can help accommodate this by allowing the candidate to solve a coding test in a language of their choice, while also inquiring about the candidate's learning plans. (Want to make sure they are willing to adapt to the team's tools and not try to force the team to adapt to them!)

I took a job once where the code base was in a FORTRAN-derivative language. I had never used FORTRAN or anything like it. Not a problem. I studied the code. I studied the docs. I figured it out and did the work. I would expect nothing less of any other competent developer.

Another job had a toolchain based on NodeJS on the server-side. Never used NodeJS. Not a problem. Studied the code. Studied the docs. You know the story.

The key skill is a developer's willingness and ability to learn the tools that are desired for the job at hand, and to accept and learn new tools when the time is right.

Re: The Insecure Developer

#38

Post by news_to_me »

zwieback wrote: post #34

I listened to this podcast where they were trying to figure out why some car salesmen sell 2x or 3x the cars of the next best guy on the lot. They found a pattern where the best performers would maybe briefly celebrate a sale and then immediately think "Oh god, I'll never sell another car, gotta get cracking right away." The less successful guys would go back to their buddies and brag, tell stories and go home early.…

That being said, I'd much rather be the less successful guy than the guy constantly afraid of failure. "Productivity" is only as good as it advances your own personal life goals, and I don't think it should come at the expense of mental wellness.

Re: The Insecure Developer

#39

Post by banned1 »

zwieback wrote: post #34

I listened to this podcast where they were trying to figure out why some car salesmen sell 2x or 3x the cars of the next best guy on the lot. They found a pattern where the best performers would maybe briefly celebrate a sale and then immediately think "Oh god, I'll never sell another car, gotta get cracking right away." The less successful guys would go back to their buddies and brag, tell stories and go home early.…

This is super interesting (car sales). I know you have probably a lot of better things to do than answering strangers' questions, but, if you could, would you mind spending 60 seconds trying to find the post and post it here?

Re: The Insecure Developer

#40

Post by seabird »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #26
mikekchar wrote: post #11

I'm sleepy, so I shouldn't post, but here goes. Confidence is really important for a programmer. Writing good code is very, very difficult. On the other hand, writing terrible code that barely works is not so difficult. There is a pretty big gulf between the two and if you don't have confidence that you can achieve something better, it is unlikely that you will even look. Having said that, our industry is full of a l…

>Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an overwhelming task. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to rant on it a bit. There are quite a few high-paying and fast-moving fields. Pretty much everything under medicine or law…

There are very good reasons developers aren't encouraged to study on the job. The biggest one I can think of (that is especially prevalent today) is that not all studying results in usable knowledge, at least in software development.

Every verdict is effectively the new rules that lawyers will play by the second that it is made; you could lose the case for not knowing a specific verdict. Medical professionals practice an ancient field that has no interest in gung-ho, extraneous solutions to problems that have already been solved. Software development is one of the few fields where people working it think that learning some oddball, corner-case framework that got its start because the original developer didn't like the code style of some other oddball, corner-case framework is necessarily and always desired by an employer.

Mediocrity is honestly what many customers need. They don't need developers of Herculean strength that can create software of unfathomable complexity, they need a patch to their billing system (or something similarly trivial).

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