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Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

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Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#41

Post by arbuge »

> Do Java programmers make more money than .NET programmers? Anyone describing themselves as either a Java programmer or .NET programmer has already lost, because a) they’re a programmer (you’re not, see above) and b) they’re making themselves non-hireable for most programming jobs. In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career.

In the real world this is (unfortunately) not how technical people are hired. The stack they are using seems to be the first thing hiring managers look at.

You would think it would be only clueless recruiters who would think this way, but my experience is that well-respected and successful entrepreneurs also operate along these lines. It is not clear to me whether their success is related to or in spite of this way of thinking. To give them the benefit of the doubt, startups often need to move quickly and those few weeks-months needed for people to become familiar with a new stack they're unfamiliar with may simply not be available.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#42

Post by criddell »

eng888888 wrote: post #40

Even if I am an registered engineer (civil), when asked, I say I am programmer because that's what I do. Absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Yep. It doesn't seem to matter much in the US, but in other parts of the world you can't call yourself an Engineer unless you are a P.E.

I typically call myself a software developer because everything I do that isn't actually writing software (documentation, design, system stuff) is in support of that.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#43

Post by mongol »

bdowling wrote: post #37
cool-RR wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best conclusion is that there is no definition of "cost center" and "profit center" that makes sense. I challenge anyone to give me such a definition. This is as good a place as any to put this: Peter Drucker originally coined the term "profit center" around 1945. He later recanted, calling it "One of the biggest mistakes I have made". He later asserted that there are only cost centers within a business, and "the…

Profit centers consist of people who can directly attribute revenues or savings to the work that they do. Everyone else is a cost center. No, it's not fair.

Sales people are usually profit centers, as I understand it. Without sales, no profits.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#44

Post by scarface74 »

arbuge wrote: post #41

> Do Java programmers make more money than .NET programmers? Anyone describing themselves as either a Java programmer or .NET programmer has already lost, because a) they’re a programmer (you’re not, see above) and b) they’re making themselves non-hireable for most programming jobs. In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t be…

Why would a company choose someone who doesn’t know the stack they are using over someone who does? Let alone 6-12 months.

Knowing the ecosystem, best practices, frameworks, etc takes longer than a few weeks.

Sure I could learn Java or Swift in a few weeks, but does that mean I would be a competent Android or iOS developer?

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#45

Post by claimred »

>In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career.

I've always been a bit baffled by notions like that. How in the world one becomes a professional in a foreign programming language tech in 6 months? It feels like every modern realworld battleworn programming stack (ecma, c++2x, .net, jvm w/e) is filled with nuances and quirks which, as it turns out, an engineer _must_ know about to be able to bump revenues a little bit and to call themselves a professional. Hell, even inside _one_ stack there are a lot of special interest fields. Is every C++ programmer a graphics programmer? Can a C++ programmer become one overnight? Highly doubt it.

>If a Python shop was looking for somebody technical to make them a pile of money, the fact that I’ve never written a line of Python would not get held against me.

How? How is that possible?

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#46

Post by scarface74 »

elif wrote: post #32

I call myself a programmer to avoid people thinking I want to be a manager or spend my days in meetings. I want people to expect 90% of my output to be code. If this is good for a career? Don't know don't care. It's what I do and enjoy, and there are many slippery slopes to not coding and becoming rusty, and ending up on the M train by default.

How do you know what to code or whether you should even be coding at all if you aren’t willing to spend the time knowing the business and the customers?

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#47

Post by elif »

scarface74 wrote: post #46
elif wrote: post #32

I call myself a programmer to avoid people thinking I want to be a manager or spend my days in meetings. I want people to expect 90% of my output to be code. If this is good for a career? Don't know don't care. It's what I do and enjoy, and there are many slippery slopes to not coding and becoming rusty, and ending up on the M train by default.

How do you know what to code or whether you should even be coding at all if you aren’t willing to spend the time knowing the business and the customers?

Because there are hard problems to solve. I'm into computer science not capitalism.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#48

Post by ghaff »

criddell wrote: post #42
eng888888 wrote: post #40

Even if I am an registered engineer (civil), when asked, I say I am programmer because that's what I do. Absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Yep. It doesn't seem to matter much in the US, but in other parts of the world you can't call yourself an Engineer unless you are a P.E. I typically call myself a software developer because everything I do that isn't actually writing software (documentation, design, system stuff) is in support of that.

>but in other parts of the world you can't call yourself an Engineer unless you are a P.E.

I've been told the same is true in some US states--or, at least, the licensing boards would like people to believe it is. (e.g. Texas) But, in my experience, hardly anyone pays any attention.

You do need a P.E. for certain things--mostly when dealing with regulators, etc.--but my understanding that in software specifically, the exam has been discontinued because essentially no on e was taking it.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#49

Post by Retric »

scarface74 wrote: post #44
arbuge wrote: post #41

> Do Java programmers make more money than .NET programmers? Anyone describing themselves as either a Java programmer or .NET programmer has already lost, because a) they’re a programmer (you’re not, see above) and b) they’re making themselves non-hireable for most programming jobs. In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t be…

Why would a company choose someone who doesn’t know the stack they are using over someone who does? Let alone 6-12 months. Knowing the ecosystem, best practices, frameworks, etc takes longer than a few weeks. Sure I could learn Java or Swift in a few weeks, but does that mean I would be a competent Android or iOS developer?

I have made the jump from one language to another several times on the job. It’s considered lower risk to use someone on the team than higher someone new. It’s also going to take a while to higher someone and get them up to speed. After a year you might not be as experienced as someone using the same stack for 5+ years but the difference is not that extreme.

Further stacks tend to share quite a bit. Knowing SQL, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, jQuery etc takes a long time and has little to do with Java vs .Net.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#50

Post by mobjack »

goatinaboat wrote: post #30
chasingthewind wrote: post #19

Re: Profit Centers vs Cost Centers I was once on a team that maintained a SaaS application that was in some sort of bizarre super-position of "cost center" and "profit center" a few years back. The company technically sold the app and made money from it, but they also tended to give it away almost for free as long as the buyer was going to be paying lots of money for the company's $FLAGSHIP_BUSINESS_SERVICE that inte…

The marketing department is a cost centre. The accountants are a cost centre. HR is a cost centre. Middle management is a cost centre. But the logic of profit centre vs cost centre is only applied to engineering departments, or workers in general. That’s really all you need to know about it.

Marketing is a huge profit center.

Improving efficiency in marketing spend can bring in millions in new business value.

If you can do that, it will definitely be noticed by the business.

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