Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#91

Post by tomduncalf » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:08 AM UTC

aetherspawn wrote: post #84

tomduncalf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how it works in the US but in the U.K. becoming a contractor can provide a good half way house between being employed and running your own company. You’re not an employee so no performance reviews or line management and you are responsible for running your own company, but at the same time many contracts will be working with teams of permanent staff for 6 months or more so it’s not like you are off total…

How do you, as a contractor, find this sort of work?

Personally I’ve been lucky enough to find it via word of mouth/recommendation and also directly approaching clients. Most contractors get their work through recruiters though, if you mention to a recruiter you are interested in contract work you’ll start getting a ton of phone calls and emails. It’s not uncommon for contracts to get extended several times, and you’ll probably build up a network of other contractors quite quickly.

One thing you might find is getting your first contract is hard if you are in a permanent job - companies generally are looking for contractors to start ASAP, so a one month notice period (with the risk that you get tempted to stay at your existing company) is often not acceptable to them. Some clients will wait for the right person but you might find you need to quit your job first before finding work which can be a bit nerve wracking - so it’s wise to survey the market, talk to recruiters etc. for a while before doing so!

If you’re UK based https://github.com/tadast/switching-to-contracting-uk/blob/m... may be interesting.

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#92

Post by ed_balls » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:08 AM UTC

aetherspawn wrote: post #84

tomduncalf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how it works in the US but in the U.K. becoming a contractor can provide a good half way house between being employed and running your own company. You’re not an employee so no performance reviews or line management and you are responsible for running your own company, but at the same time many contracts will be working with teams of permanent staff for 6 months or more so it’s not like you are off total…

How do you, as a contractor, find this sort of work?

you can start with a current employer

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#93

Post by laythea » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

ed_balls wrote: post #92

aetherspawn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you, as a contractor, find this sort of work?

you can start with a current employer

be warned: the government does not like it if you are an employee and then go directly into contracting for said same company.

you become an "employee under guise" and then you will be taxed as such. then you get the worst of both worlds.

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#94

Post by tomduncalf » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

ed_balls wrote: post #92

aetherspawn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you, as a contractor, find this sort of work?

you can start with a current employer

In the UK you need to be careful transitioning from permanent to contract for the same company without a gap as it could be an IR35 risk (assuming you want to operate as a Limited Company at least). Not saying it’s not possible but you’d need to be careful and explicit that the contract isn’t just a direct extension of your permanent work.

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#95

Post by laythea » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:17 AM UTC

aetherspawn wrote: post #84

tomduncalf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how it works in the US but in the U.K. becoming a contractor can provide a good half way house between being employed and running your own company. You’re not an employee so no performance reviews or line management and you are responsible for running your own company, but at the same time many contracts will be working with teams of permanent staff for 6 months or more so it’s not like you are off total…

How do you, as a contractor, find this sort of work?

To get contracts as a contractor, you need to differentiate yourself from the market as best as possible.

One way is to try and get some sort of security cleared job. Once you do, you immediately elevate yourself away "from the crowd" of developers in the market and you will find major global companies want you and they pay well. And when you get your first gig, you can be sure that another company will want a security cleared engineer, so it's good for job security.

Just be careful how you say no when they ask you if you want to join on a perm basis :)

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#96

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:19 AM UTC

wjossey wrote: post #22

I’ve been reviewing a lot of career path documents recently for different engineering orgs, and every one is fairly uniform in that you either progress into management, team leadership, or architecture (or some blend of the three). If not, you’ll stagnate at a pretty high level, but stagnate none the less. I’ve been noodling on this for a while, and I think maybe a fourth track at a lot of organizations should be spe…

[deleted]

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#97

Post by laythea » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

kaetemi wrote: post #73

indogooner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the average ones are like that but the good ones I have seen provide a broader perspective, simplify solution, prevent the excited devs from trying out complicated solution with hyped but unsuitable technologies among other things. They save so much time and effort of an org that they are much more valuable than many managers.

So many self-proclaimed architects who do literally the opposite.

Agree there are, but that's why you can usually spot the ones who aren't, quite readily.

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#98

Post by laythea » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:23 AM UTC

gitgud wrote: post #37

democracy wrote: post #13

You stay in the company long enough and you write less code and spend more time managing people and processes as now you own your projects as the most knowledgable person for these projects. You start hating it (I did) and look for a pure programming role. But you are not in your twenties any more and you have to align with and follow someone else's designs and decisions and you can't since you are experienced and kn…

George Hotz once mentioned in an [1] interview; Managing people just another abstraction in making software. You can think of people kind of like an IDE that you can use to create things... I thought it was an interesting way to view management. [1] https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2018...

This is probably a very efficient mentality, but I find it equally depressing.

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#99

Post by laythea » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:31 AM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #25

I think it has a lot to do with wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Supposing you literally “just write code,” there’s a ceiling to how much impact you can have. One person can only hold so large of a program (or so many small programs) in their head, and if you are on a project that reaches a certain size you have to start working with other humans to maintain it, and thus the need for technical leadership and…

Agree with all you say. the people who have a "higher multiplier" indirectly enact value rather than directly "at the coal face".

It takes a certain kind of person, to be able to extract self value from seeing others directly create it, rather than directly creating it. Not everyone prefers that and some find more satisfaction when directly responsible for the added value.

It's the self consumption of a direct-value vs indirect-value effect that drives whether you will be good at one or the other.

The problem is that the mainstream mantra sways people into chasing indirect-value type roles, when they ought not to be (for the good of the individual).

Re: Why Good Developers Are Promoted into Unhappiness (2007)

#100

Post by pjc50 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 10:36 AM UTC

marmaduke wrote: post #44

blub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this more or less what Google does with all their profitless projects? Giving senior engineers something to play with so that they don't leave for the competition or create new competition. I guess it's nice for the devs at first, but creates a lot of waste. They're basically spamming the world with programming languages, libraries and products only to wind them down and start again.

> They're basically spamming the world with programming languages, libraries and products only to wind them down and start again Replace libraries, languages and products with statistics, hypotheses and figures and you have described scientific research. The point is that each iteration learns from the last, in principle, even if they aren’t backwards or forwards compatible.

> Replace libraries, languages and products with statistics, hypotheses and figures and you have described scientific research.

Well, yes - and the inability to build on previous research code because people don't publish it results in a colossal waste of (usually) public money. Nonreproducibility in science, and Google's abandoning of products, are phenomena that resemble one another somewhat.