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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)

#241

Post by the_watcher »

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 point is to acknowledge that the way most technical people are hired isn't the way that maximizes outcomes for technical people. Patio11's point is that the way to maximize outcomes as a technical employee is to _break out_ of this paradigm. It might reduce some of your top of funnel (random recruiter outreach) options, but it will increase the value of the opportunities that do arise.

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

#242

Post by jstummbillig »

dcolkitt wrote: post #229
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack is relevant though. If you need a front-end architect, and you hire someone with 10+ years Java experience, they aren't going to know the first thing about web accessibility, polyfills, bundlers, cross-browser support, etc. The domains of implementing microservices vs. writing front end code are fundamentally driven by very different problems. The stack an engineer has experience with can be one indicator of th…

> the first thing about web accessibility, polyfills, bundlers, cross-browser support, etc. Almost all of these concepts could easily be learned in a few weeks by a talented engineer with strong fundamentals in software design and computer science. Polyfills aren't exactly quantum mechanics. They're not some radically different mental paradigm that takes years to develop fluidity. If you already have a sound basis in…

> Almost all of these concepts could easily be learned in a few weeks by a talented engineer with strong fundamentals in software design and computer science.

How about average engineers with average fundamentals? The kind most people will on average be hiring and working with.

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

#243

Post by username90 »

scarface74 wrote: post #170
bhldev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an easy problem. It's a database concurrency issue and well beyond the skillset of most mobile devs. Database isn't even a required course for a compsci degree it's usually an elective. My point is the problem you think you solved, you didn't and it will break under dozens of scenarios. Maybe the clients are happy and they think it works but you just haven't encountered the case where data goes missing or ov…

So you’re saying “it’s not a good idea” to have software that actually fulfills the need? The mobile app that doesn’t work in the majority of use cases to solve the problem that it was meant to solve is useless. And yes “the problem” we solved, a mobile app that could route field technicians dynamically at a level of quality we needed we did solve. The word "enterprise" is an euphemism for low cost and potentially lo…

> And yes “the problem” we solved, a mobile app that could route field technicians dynamically at a level of quality we needed we did solve.

Just look for people good at handling split data updates and ownership, there are a lot of people working on that kind issues on the backend, I really doubt you find more mobile devs with those skills than backend devs with it.

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

#244

Post by scarface74 »

username90 wrote: post #243
scarface74 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying “it’s not a good idea” to have software that actually fulfills the need? The mobile app that doesn’t work in the majority of use cases to solve the problem that it was meant to solve is useless. And yes “the problem” we solved, a mobile app that could route field technicians dynamically at a level of quality we needed we did solve. The word "enterprise" is an euphemism for low cost and potentially lo…

> And yes “the problem” we solved, a mobile app that could route field technicians dynamically at a level of quality we needed we did solve. Just look for people good at handling split data updates and ownership, there are a lot of people working on that kind issues on the backend, I really doubt you find more mobile devs with those skills than backend devs with it.

What makes you think that the two are distinct?

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

#245

Post by eropple »

shantly wrote: post #237
eropple wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Willingness to work on brownfield Ruby projects is rare After working in a dev agency that took on outside Rails projects several times while I was there, my conclusion is that Rails (not the only way to write even Web-focused Ruby, and not the only one I've used, but the only one that'll score you any points for hiring) is a pretty bad framework for any project that will have multiple teams on it over its lifetime…

Agreed in full. I don't love Rails, either; I always used https://github.com/modern-project/modern-ruby (which I almost definitionally like, 'cause I wrote it). Rails is a framework that depends on developer continuity. I view Ruby as a tool for writing very specific things for experts, more than anything else. Web dev in general seems to be against that principle; Ruby could probably benefit a lot from more effort spent on ways to make it hard to do the Wrong Thing at this point.

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

#246

Post by vore »

buboard wrote: post #201

If you like your job, call yourself a programmer and build stuff you like. This article is marginally good advice for your pocket but bad for your soul. Don't be a programmer and act like a lawyer. It's one of the few jobs where it doesnt matter if you 're a dog. You create value, easily, you don't just extract it. It's part of the reason why i m a programmer and not an e.g. academic.

You do realize academia is where a lot of the research for programming comes out of, right? Seems like an unfair way to characterize academia.

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

#247

Post by scarface74 »

mcv wrote: post #230
throwaway981211 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the right way to hire? Not saying it’s wrong but I’ve taken a different approach which has generally worked out. Even if I was hiring for a specific role (front end), I care less about familiarity with specific bundlers or frameworks and something more like - “Can this person problem solve and deal with varying levels of ambiguity? Do they seem capable of figuring something out without a ton of direction?”

That is exactly the thing I select for. I recently had to hire 4 developers, and I was not all that interested in how many years of experience they had in javascript or typescript (our main language), and even less if you know Vue or Express (our stack). I mean, it's good to know javascript, and certainly ES6 or typescript, but I'm much more interested in: can I discuss stuff with you, do you have interesting opinion…

And then when you need to ship now you have a bunch of dead weight while you wait for them to ramp up. Also, since now you are taking time from your devs who do know the stack to mentor your new hires and code reviews because you can’t trust them to do good work without messing up your code base. They are now doing “negative work”.

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

#248

Post by scarface74 »

jghn wrote: post #150
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…

Until your customer needs a feature a month from now and not a year from now or you only have a six month runway....

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

#249

Post by username90 »

scarface74 wrote: post #244
username90 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yes “the problem” we solved, a mobile app that could route field technicians dynamically at a level of quality we needed we did solve. Just look for people good at handling split data updates and ownership, there are a lot of people working on that kind issues on the backend, I really doubt you find more mobile devs with those skills than backend devs with it.

What makes you think that the two are distinct?

What two are distinct? Yes you sometimes have conflicting data on two machines when you work on mobile apps, but that is the core of a lot of distributed computing problems. So if you only look for those skills in mobile devs you will miss out on a lot of people with relevant experience.

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

#250

Post by james_s_tayler »

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 not even just start-ups. Established companies work the same way. Getting pidgeon-holed is a very real and common phenomenon.

It's also kind of silly in a lot of cases too. It always feels like "Oh I see you do Angular... but could you _really_ be capable of developing in React? I don't know..."

So retarded. Yet this attitude seems to dominate.

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