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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)

#141

Post by curuinor »

pascalxus wrote: post #133

Much of what he says about business and programming is all true, at least in theory for well run, competitive businesses. But, for instance, sometimes in govt, they never actually calculate the ROI of a project or employee. They just think: well, we have money that needs spending, let's higher some people to build some seemingly useful software. Determining what's useful and what's not ahead of time is harder than it…

Don't be in the bay area, that's how. That's why they pay bay area peeps the big bucks: the standard of skill is higher here, because of the community and other factors.

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

#143

Post by throwawaytoday5 »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #95
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…

What if you truly need employment and you are a run of the mill beginner? Is that 5 company application approach still optimal?

IME no.

This is going to be an extremely cynical take but most software jobs (>80%) are basically the same. That goes for the companies as well, we aren't as unique as we think; and the companies that are unique or doing unique work aren't exactly having trouble finding employees (FAANG vs nearly everyone else).

If you want an employment as a beginner apply to as many postings as possible. Only do research for companies once they want to talk to you, anything else is a waste of time. It also takes very little time filling out job applications (outside of obnoxious companies that ask lots of behavior Q), it should less than 10 minutes to fill out job apps.

IDK how to feel about cover letters, every company I've worked at (startups, national ISP, to massive insurance companies) have stated they never read cover letters sent. They just want to make sure candidates have all the keywords on their resume before even talking (this part is largely automated away).

I have a basic cover letter that explains what I'm doing at my current job and how I'd like to work at $company doing $unique_stuff. Basically my cover letter is 90% the same between job apps, but I change the intro paragraph to match the title, company, and job description.

But as a beginner or moving to a new city where you know no one, apply to everything everywhere. It's a numbers game and even as you progress in your career, you may not command enough talent to target specific companies.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

freehunter wrote: post #131
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.

I’ve met many programmers/engineers who are terrified of becoming management and make (what I believe to be) poor career choices trying to avoid it. Instead they get passed over for pay raises and interesting opportunities because they’re seen as being difficult to work with. When times get lean, I’ve seen those people get laid off first because no one likes working with them. I work on a team of 50 employees. For th…

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by SomeOldThrow »

freehunter wrote: post #131
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.

I’ve met many programmers/engineers who are terrified of becoming management and make (what I believe to be) poor career choices trying to avoid it. Instead they get passed over for pay raises and interesting opportunities because they’re seen as being difficult to work with. When times get lean, I’ve seen those people get laid off first because no one likes working with them. I work on a team of 50 employees. For th…

If only we could retroactively demote all the managers who suck at it!

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

#146

Post by codingslave »

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…

Learning rate doesnt really matter anymore. If you want to do really well you basically have to work for FAANG, who will basically only vet you on your algorithms skills. They completely negate everything else. So none of it matters, all that matters is if at interview time you can find the most optimal solution. If you want to work for companies paying less money, then sure, experience counts.

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

#147

Post by Viliam1234 »

matz1 wrote: post #70
mongol wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But without product, no sales?

I suppose the real difference is between short term and long term.

If you double the number of salesmen, you can increase your income right now. Firing all the salesmen would drop the income to zero.

If you double the number of developers, there is no difference during the following month or two. If you fire all the developers, you can still continue selling the product for a few months, maybe years.

As a manager, you may be tempted to increase the short-term profit, grab your bonus, and get promoted to somewhere else, so that someone else will have to deal with the long-term impact.

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

#148

Post by dorgo »

cool-RR wrote: post #24
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…

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…

>I challenge anyone to give me such a definition.

If the balance of a department is positive then its a profit center. It's a matter of income attribution inside of a company and can be manipulated by people in charge.

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

#149

Post by swsieber »

matz1 wrote: post #70
mongol wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But without product, no sales?

Nah, you can totally have sales without a product - it's just not very sustainable.

It's a little tongue in cheek, but I think illustrates a real perspective - improving a product doesnt necessarily extract more revenue from existing customers. Selling more copies does extract more revenue from existing products though.

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

#150

Post by jghn »

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…

It's the first thing some hiring managers look at.

Speaking for myself as a hiring manager I'm not looking for specific tech stacks. I'm looking for general patterns. Someone who has spent their entire career doing front end work is unlikely to be a great fit for embedded development and vice versa, but I don't care so much about the specific technologies they used in the process.

My experience has been that concepts and fundamentals trump specific tech stacks. However I also take a longer range view of things. I care far less about relative productivity of two candidates a month from now than I do a year from now.

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