Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 316 posts

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

#151

Post by codetrotter »

bhldev wrote: post #121
scarface74 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 In…

I recently came across a company similar to Udemy offering cheap “on sale” video courses like Udemy does.

This company has an app and in it you can download the videos and watch them offline, just like Udemy.

That’s great, I have a limited amount of data on my plan.

And better yet, I can watch these videos when I am completely offline, for example on the 30 hour connecting series of flights I went on recently. Except... whereas the Udemy app actually works completely offline, this other app needs internet access in order for the “my courses” tab to work.

You still have access to the videos through the “downloads” tab. But there they are not organized neatly. So I decided to do other things than to look at any of the videos.

Also, a lot of apps are bad at properly syncing data. For example I think neither Udemy nor this other one properly syncs the course progress data. Even when they do have a connection.

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

#152

Post by candybar »

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?

> 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 would separate this into two separate categories - big tech companies (or others with similarly large shared internal infra) and others. For big tech companies, for most positions, the tech stack is proprietary internal stuff such that knowing the language and best practices only get you about 10% of the way. For other types of companies, it's generally more important that you hire people with the right business context than the exact tech stack.

With that said, native mobile development isn't just a stack - it's more of a different, though overlapping, career path - the main reason not to hire non-mobile developers into a mobile role isn't that the stack is different and takes time to learn, but that the workflow is so different that they may or may not know what it is that they are even signing up for. Hypothetically, you'd rather hire someone with Xamarin background with no Java experience for an Android java role, than someone with no mobile dev experience, but lots of Java backend experience.

My first mobile development experience was a moderately complex Android project on an app that was used by tens of millions of people daily. There was no ramp-up - I had zero prior experience before signing up for this project, never even played around with any mobile development before and I had never professionally programmed in Java - and I was the sole engineer working on both mobile and backend. It was a little painful but everything shipped on time.

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

#153

Post by matz1 »

swsieber wrote: post #149
matz1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Likewise, you can totally have sales with just the product. There is saying good product sell itself.

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

#154

Post by k1t »

Finnucane wrote: post #116
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…

Most places I’ve worked had the attitude that profit center = sales and everyone else was a cost to be controlled or eliminated. It shouldn’t be really surprising that management thinks management is the most valuable function, and actually making the product is not.

This has been my experience exactly.

I used to think that the team building the product was a profit center. The more time we spend solving customer problems, the more revenue the company generates.

The reality is they view engineering teams like assembly line workers. The revenue was generated by the sales team and now they come to the engineers to get the bad news of how much that revenue is going to cost them.

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

#155

Post by scarface74 »

bhldev wrote: post #121
scarface74 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 In…

And you’re kind of demonstrating my point - the difference between people who think it’s an easy problem and the proportion who have experience.

Enterprise mobile apps aren’t about the apps you download from the App Store. Usually they are distributed using an on-site mobile device management system.

1st use case: I worked for s company that wrote field service applications for ruggedized Windows mobile devices. Some had cellular, some had WiFi, and some had neither. You had to actually dock the device. The field service techs had to have all of the information they needed on the device to do service calls including routes whether or not they had connectivity. They would record the information and it would sync back to the server whenever they had a connection.

2nd use case: worked for a company that wrote software for railroad car repair billing. Repairs are governed by Raillinc (https://www.railinc.com/rportal/documents/18/260737/CRB_Proc...) all of the rules and audits had to be on the device and the record of the repair had to be available whether or not they had connectivity. It had to sync back with the server whenever a connection was available.

3rd case: software for doctors. Hospitals are notorious for having poor connections.

4th case: home health care nurses had to record lots of information for Medicare billing. Again you can’t count on having mobile connections.

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

#157

Post by dleslie »

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…

> The stack they are using seems to be the first thing hiring managers look at.

I try to avoid companies that hire in this manner; it shows a lack of vision and planning. It's unlikely that a given developer will be working on the same stack in five years; the stack will have evolved or the developer will have moved on.

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

#158

Post by abtinf »

candybar wrote: post #152
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? 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 would separate this into two separate categories - big tech companies (or others with…

> It was a little painful but everything shipped on time.

Your last sentence would seem to contradict the entire body of your comment. You describe mobile development as a fundamentally different thing, but then your first gig was to work on a large project, the result of which was shipping on time at the cost of a “little” pain.

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

#159

Post by pcmoney »

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…

I would argue that it is the first thing a manager looking for a cost center, cog type engineer looks at. They are not looking for an engineer who actually understands business they are looking for a “ plumbing engineer” that just keeps their head down and grinds out code. There is little upside in this position and this type hiring manager mentality should filter those jobs out for you.

I do agree that most start ups will probably restrict them selves to hiring in the same stack as their tolerance for learning curves will be extremely short.

However, I feel that many employers are used to engineers who don’t “get business” and so they just want somebody to plunk down code. This leads them to “what kind of dumb cog/stack are you?” questions as they are already assuming they won’t be able to hire a truly “full stack” engineer who understands the revenues and costs associated with their work and how they impact corporate strategy etc.

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

#160

Post by braindeath »

bhldev wrote: post #121
scarface74 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 In…

> Most apps would do better to 100% avoid the problem and just say "No Internet Connection" if there's no WiFi or 3g.

Lol we are in such a bubble.

Post reply on HN