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Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

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Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#191

Post by tracker1 »

puranjay wrote: post #177
gwbas1c wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how little I knew after a 4-year Bachelor's degree, 6 months of nights and weekends is insignificant.

My brother-in-law was doing a Master's in Chemistry. In May 2018 he knew next to nothing about CS. In November 2018, he landed a junior data scientist position at a prestigious healthcare company. Granted, he's very smart and basically coded all day for 6 months, but I'd say it is possible for a motivated individual.

I always say that motivation and self-drive account for far more in terms of success with software development than anything else. In the end, it's the guys that figure stuff out, explore, research on their own that you want to keep around.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#192

Post by tracker1 »

protonimitate wrote: post #84
gwbas1c wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how little I knew after a 4-year Bachelor's degree, 6 months of nights and weekends is insignificant.

I don't think it's directly comparable. There's a difference, and not insignificant, between "learning everything for CS degree" vs "learning what you need to get hired as a web dev". But I'll agree that 6 months is not that much time in the "learn new career skills and find a job" timeline. I spent around 18 months of nights/weekend practice and learning, followed by 3 months of interview prep before I found a job a…

> Get used to learning things on your own, you will be doing it for the rest of your career if you make the switch.

Cannot second this enough. As a developer, there will always be new tools and technology. More room to grow into adjacent development. And more line of business knowledge to gain. I can't think of any other field, that has more lifetime learning involved in it.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#193

Post by JohnFen »

cantthinkofone wrote: post #144
cantthinkofone wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, web apps aren't websites. The distinction is pretty sharp when you move from a simple static old fashioned display to Amazon tier complexity where money is being transacted, log in information stored, orders updated, and a million more things besides. The big question is if the internet and its primary portals, the desktop browser and the smartphone, will reach the end of their tether. The only thing I could s…

Another risk I think is the automation of coding. It already happens all the time, and in principle coding should be the most automatable of anything. The only thing saving it is that it's very hard to automate the creation of good ideas or purposeful human intentions, which naturally inform most successful coding projects. There's also a bit of a conflict of interest, why would coders building automation systems wan…

> in principle coding should be the most automatable of anything

You still have to describe to the automaton what you want it to do -- and in doing that, you're programming.

Modern languages are all "automated programming" already -- you aren't writing machine code, you're describing to the automation system what you want, and then it generates the machine code for you.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#194

Post by tracker1 »

ehnto wrote: post #128
rossdavidh wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might agree on the reality, but the market rate of pay for React programmers is considerably higher than that for Magento, whether this is fair or well advised or not.

I can't argue there. Career wise, React is a good choice. It is a really cool piece of technology too. I have been very resistant to the new hat frontend frameworks, mostly because I had a strong methodology for frontend UI already and there was no sense throwing it away. But even I put React in my toolbelt recently.

React was the first front end framework that felt "right" to me. Of course, I was a fan of templating with E4X (which never gained support outside Adobe and Mozilla).

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#195

Post by SovietDissident »

voidhorse wrote: post #168
austenallred wrote: post #76

Yes. I am the co-founder of Lambda School - (YC S17 - a CS education where the school doesn’t get paid unless you get a good job). Right now we see about 3 students/day get hired. You’ll likely hear a lot of people talking about how the market for juniors is flooded. That is partially true, but it’s flooded with people who cannot code . If you can actually be a productive employee I literally know 100 companies that…

You're probably correct (I don't know enough about the junior applicant pool myself but I am going to speculate nonetheless), but 'cannot code' is vague, and I think this precise sort of vagueness creates confusion around: a.) What companies need. b.) What companies think they need. c.) What prospective programmers think companies need. What companies actually need (or should need, if they're solving some problem), I…

You voice a lot of similar conclusions I've come to, as someone who's mid-level and came through the bootcamp/practical application route.

One of my coworkers has a Math/CS degree and I feel like he's light-years ahead of me when it comes to solving algorithms, to address just one facet of your comment. He can see the underlying problem/solution at a much deeper level. At the same time, I think that teaching the deep theory first would have been too abstract to me; it makes more sense now that I have some practical experience and have encountered real-world problems that need to be solved.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#196

Post by beefalo »

catwind7 wrote: post #153
jspiral wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a hiring manager, my experience has been that the average unsolicited resume belongs to someone who can't implement fizzbuzz. (this has a lot to do with the population that spams resumes though i believe) My experience has also been that most raw junior candidates need significant handholding to implement anything into a typical production system at first, and that the learning curve from there varies greatly. Wha…

My guess is that he's taking issue with this argument that I'm not quite sure was made: "The market is flooded with people who cannot code, therefore it's easy to find a job as a junior engineer" The market could in fact be flooded with people who cannot code (I don't know for sure). Assuming that's true, that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to get a job as a junior dev (speaking from someone on the interviewing s…

The market being flooded with poor talent may even make it worse than it being flooded with good talent. Companies now need to invest a lot more time filtering out the people who can't code to hire junior candidates. Instead companies may just decide they will invest that money in the salaries for mid-level and senior engineers instead of time spent hiring juniors.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#197

Post by tracker1 »

andybak wrote: post #23
1_player wrote: post #8

As a sibling commenter said, define web developer first. I can see two viable, yet very different definitions: 1. Frontend web engineer: Versed in HTML, CSS, modern Javascript libraries such as React, Vue, Angular. This is a programming role first and foremost, better paying than #2, and what I would suggest focusing on. 2. "Classic web developer": Versed in HTML, CSS and just enough JS/jQuery. Knows the inside out o…

How about "web developer who thinks heavy client-side frameworks are a bad idea"?

Define "heavy." Right now I have react, material-ui and a handful of libraries in an application with an initial load (through main entry point) under 80k gzipped, and under 300k total load (1.6mb in memory, which includes app configuration data) when you navigate through to an area with graphs. This also includes SVG manipulation and image overlays.

In terms of what is being done, I'm far more judicious with removing unnecessary libraries. I've followed up other developers removing any number of modules in favor of hand-crafting from baseline modules. Since it's JSS it includes semi-dynamic styling that is based on async loaded modules. ex: if you don't go onto a chart/graph page, you don't get those modules.

It really depends on your tooling, knowledge and what your needs are. IMHO it's far better than typical jquery + bootstrap + bootstrap extensions that many of those who look down on client-side frameworks lean towards.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#198

Post by tracker1 »

everdev wrote: post #121

Web agency owner here. There is a surplus of beginners due to a surge in tech bootcamps. If you're in the bottom half of talent it's a race to the bottom of low cost. If you're top 25-50%, you'll probably have consistent good paying work. If you're top 25%+ you can make a great living. Probably similar to any skill set.

From interviewing from bootcamps, I can mostly agree. I find that those who put in more effort beyond the assignment minimums tend to be those that have worked out the best.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#199

Post by beefalo »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #46
giancarlostoro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about Go in enterprise web development, have any widely established companies gone full in on Go? Like migrated from Java or other stacks. I'm mostly a C# / Python web developer at my current job, and I'm diving into Go. Might even start suggesting it for future projects to see if it gets approved once I feel reasonably proficient in Go that is.

Recently a headhunter told me a couple of large companies have switched departments entirely to Go, in my area, but only hire people who "are really into Go", meaning lots of experience and knowledge. The companies, iirc, were Monsanto (now Bayer) and Mastercard.

Go still seems pretty niche here. Even the companies you mention are still mostly using Java, but I do know of teams using Go on certain projects at those places.

Re: Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?

#200

Post by dev_19 »

austenallred wrote: post #76

Yes. I am the co-founder of Lambda School - (YC S17 - a CS education where the school doesn’t get paid unless you get a good job). Right now we see about 3 students/day get hired. You’ll likely hear a lot of people talking about how the market for juniors is flooded. That is partially true, but it’s flooded with people who cannot code . If you can actually be a productive employee I literally know 100 companies that…

>If you can actually be a productive employee I literally know 100 companies that will hire you today. As a self-taught engineer you have to convince them of that, which mostly means a solid portfolio, but there is insane demand. And if you get even one year of experience you won’t believe how many opportunities open up.

This just isn’t true.

The industry has become insanely competitive for anyone but the top level seniors who are above the whiteboard/coderpad interview. I’ve been on the market for 4 months now without so much as an in-person interview. It’s absolutely brutal. And that’s with 3 years experience + solid references.

For every job posting now there are a hundred freshly minted CS grads applying who can pass LeetCode exams in their sleep. It seems companies are far more interested in these people than those with self taught skills and practical experience.

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