Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011) • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by bhldev » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #82

williamdclt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would a company choose someone who doesn’t know the stack they are using over someone who does? If the two candidates are perfectly identical on every other criteria, sure. But that's not the case, the point is that most other criteria are more important that the specific tech experience when dealing with competent people. > Sure I could learn Java or Swift in a few weeks, but does that mean I would be a compet…

You’re not worried about their mobile experience until the app fails to work in a tunnel because they are expecting an always on connection or they have half their records on their mobile and half on their server and need to figure out which to use or they never had to figure out a syncing algorithm because you usually don’t have to sync things on the web since you never expect long periods of not being connected. Ed…

I notice this a lot on apps in the subway (who doesn't) and the app just dies

A lot of problems in life can be simply avoided this is no different... If you're getting that tiny last bit of differentiation because you're 90% market share and you can afford to hire people to solve that exact specific problem then great. But that isn't most places. Most apps would do better to 100% avoid the problem and just say "No Internet Connection" if there's no WiFi or 3g. On top of that you get mobile developers who swore to God they solved this problem but guess what they actually have no idea what they are doing. They think it works but it doesn't because it's actually a database concurrency control problem. This https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/mvcc-intro.html and what I expect for someone who claims to "solve the problem" not some "algorithm" they invented.

So I don't buy it, and I don't buy the business need for it unless it's an app specifically made for disconnected use. Unfortunately it sounds like one of those things people do to make themselves feel important or smart (no nice way to put it; I see it as bad as someone who invents their own encryption "algorithm" without realizing how ridiculous that is).

In short I would say don't do it. And if someone does it better be a real business requirement.

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

#122

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #71

scarface74 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Why would a company choose someone who doesn’t know the stack they are using over someone who does? If the two candidates are perfectly identical on every other criteria, sure. But that's not the case, the point is that most other criteria are more important that the specific tech experience when dealing with competent people. > Sure I could learn Java or Swift in a few weeks, but does that mean I would be a compet…

> But that's not the case, the point is that most other criteria are more important that the specific tech experience when dealing with competent people

Unfortunately, the more important criteria are harder to assess, and hiring in the real world very heavily weights the east-to-assess bits whether or not they are actually important.

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

#123

Post by dominotw » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

amirathi wrote: post #60

This is fantastic practical advice for software engineers early in their career. Here's some more based on the common pitfalls I see, - Don't apply to 50+ companies at one go thinking only a % of them will call you. Choose ~5 companies, do a lot of homework about their business & write to key people at these places telling in ONE paragraph what you can do for their business. If it fails, choose next ~5 and so on. - O…

> write to key people at these places telling in ONE paragraph what you can do for their business.

Do you have an example of this? What can you possibly do for their business?

Do key people respond to random solicitations for a job. Don't you still have to go though their original Leetcode interview process. I am really not seeing what the advantage of this approach.

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

#124

Post by dejawu » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

Sure, this post might objectively get you to a higher paying software job, but good God I hope I never start seeing the world like this guy or ever have to work with people who do. Am I really reading the same article as everyone else? The one I'm reading is filled with these sociopathic gems:

> Add revenue. Reduce costs. Those are your only goals.

> You’re in the business of unemploying people. If you think that is unfair, go back to school and study something that doesn’t matter.

> A good engineer has a track record of — repeat after me — increasing revenue or decreasing costs.

> Much of Fog Creek uses the Microsoft Stack. I can’t even spell ASP.NET and they’d still hire me.

> You should be a good person to everyone you meet — it is the moral thing to do, and as a sidenote will really help your networking

> Strive to help people. It is the right thing to do, and people are keenly aware of who have in the past given them or theirs favors.

> This is how the game is played. If you feel poorly about it, you’re like a batter who feels poorly about stealing bases in baseball: you’re not morally superior, you’re just playing poorly

> Social grooming is a really important skill.

There are some bits of the article I agree with, but I can't help but wonder what happened to this person to make them see the world in such a brutally transactional way, where being kind and genuine are just hat tips towards your humanity while ultimately serving to further your career. I can see this guide as maybe useful for someone who wants to use software engineering as a means of clawing their way out of poverty, but on HN, where I'd imagine most people have a genuine interest in tech outside of or in addition to its potential to make them money, I'm terribly disappointed to see the majority of people here agreeing with him.

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

#125

Post by eropple » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

jfabre wrote: post #67

rco8786 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is entirely company dependent. My team is primarily Ruby and we hire folks with no ruby experience all the time.

Because ruby programmers are rare nowadays and your company still need people to build software. At least, that's my assumption.

They're not rare. I know a ton and many still write Ruby. Willingness to work on brownfield Ruby projects is rare; as with other similar systems like Django or roll-your-own Express stuff, such systems strongly tend towards chaos and a lack of maintainability after a certain point if they haven’t already had strong leadership end-to-end. In my neck of the woods, the folks who you want doing that work don't want to do that work anymore. Unless you pay a lot.

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

#126

Post by truth_seeker » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

> Remember engineers are not hired to create programs and how they are hired to create business value? The dominant quality which gets you jobs is the ability to give people the perception that you will create value. This is not necessarily coextensive with ability to create value.

Sadly true. Its all feel good effect that trumps the genuine effort.

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

#127

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #120

scarface74 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing an ecosystem well on a senior level won’t happen in a few weeks. But to your example, I’ve seen developers who couldn’t adjust to developing where they had a rapid release cycle because they were use to the big design up front. How you develop software where you don’t have all of the requirements for the next year is a completely different mindset. Even on comments on this post, I see people who aren’t actual…

I agree the problems you're describing are real and important to select for, but just requiring agile experience won't help you there. Lots of people practice a weird form of agile development, where they go through all the motions of fast iteration, but almost all tasks consist of non-negotiable internal dependencies and not value delivered to a customer. I'd argue a similar thing is true for tech stacks. If there's…

> almost all tasks consist of non-negotiable internal dependencies and not value delivered to a customer

It’s especially nice when you realize that as soon as you’ve completed all the non-negotiable features, a bunch of other things magically becomes non-negotiable.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #111

FeatureIncomple wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Don't apply to 50+ companies at one go thinking only a % of them will call you. Choose ~5 companies, do a lot of homework about their business & write to key people at these places telling in ONE paragraph what you can do for their business. If it fails, choose next ~5 and so on. This is one of the best advices for people starting their careers. This comment should be at the top of this thread! EDIT: Formatting

No, no, no, arghh no! No matter how much you research, study, network, and prep for any one special particular company, if you are the one to reach out you’re going to get ghosted a certain percentage of the time. If that percentage is around 90-95%, which is what it is in my experience being in the industry for 20 years, then focusing on 5 companies may mean zero callbacks. You need to cast a wide net, especially as…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by mobjack » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

imhoguy wrote: post #115

mobjack wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Joga classes in the office can improve employees and management efficiency and their comfort of life so such spend can bring in millions in new business value by healthier and happier staff. Is joga trainer a profit center?

Marketing brings in new customers directly.

Joga classes for employees do not.

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

#130

Post by djsumdog » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

I've always called myself a Computer Scientist when people ask me what I do for a living. Not a software engineer or programmer, but what my actual majors were. I have a bachelors and masters in it, I've published three papers (although in Geography Journals .. because .. eh it's a long story), so I might as well claim it.