Is there any content in this?
I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
211–220 of 322 posts
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am hopeful we can suppress this disease before herd immunity develops in cities. But, once that happens they stop acting like dense areas in terms of disease spread. It’s really a question of regional R factors under various levels of social distancing, population, and herd imminuty.
I have a pet theory that what we're essentially doing is running a huge experiment where we select for the least dangerous strains of the coronavirus. People who get a mild flu or no symptoms at all are less well quarantined and are significantly more likely to pass it on to other people. People who get the worst symptoms are tightly quarantined in hospital, reducing their chances of passing on the worst forms of the…
That's exactly what happens. Diseases don't "want" to actually kill their hosts; it kills them too. If evolution was selecting for more dangerous variants over time, we'd all be long dead; multicellular life might not even be possible. But it's actually selecting for things that live in the host indefinitely and spread over long periods of time, which leave the host alive in order to do so.
In the long term, the coronavirus will very likely either be entirely eradicated by human action or become just another cold... but first you have to survive to see that long term.
This is also why the worst diseases you see are zoonoses, diseases that spread from other species. They are co-evolved (if you want the term for this, look up "coevolution") with their hosts, then they jump into us and do the things that they "think" will just lightly affect their hosts and let them spread, and we keel over dead because those are the wrong things.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#213I started during the 2008 recession. I think the people who hurt the most back then were the people who'd just attended 6 week Ruby on Rails bootcamps and gotten 70k/year jobs (which was a cliche at the time). Suddenly, that was no longer realistic. And even among them, the passionate people found a way. I got into tech with no education during the recession just on psychotic passion alone. I was working at but hacki…
> I intuit that if you are insanely dedicated enough the universe has a weird appreciation for that kind of thing, and eventually throws you a bone. I know it's wrong and irrational but everytime I've tried that it's worked, so there's some anecdotal personal truth.
I've experienced this too, & entered the profession in 2011 without completing post secondary
Essentially I believe it comes down to the fact that if you take a 0.3% chance every day, you'll land it once a year. When you're just trying to scrape by you won't make take those odds. But if you're passionate you're not thinking about those odds, they're a byproduct of your passion
Prefer opportunism to goal setting
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#214I started during the 2008 recession. I think the people who hurt the most back then were the people who'd just attended 6 week Ruby on Rails bootcamps and gotten 70k/year jobs (which was a cliche at the time). Suddenly, that was no longer realistic. And even among them, the passionate people found a way. I got into tech with no education during the recession just on psychotic passion alone. I was working at but hacki…
Siempre me asombra ver la diversidad de personas en HN. En que parte de Mexico estas? Saludos!
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#215Is that..it? Where's the story? The paragraph about September 2001 is followed by April 2020, with nothing about what happened during the nearly 20 years in between? I don't even know what kind of work the author does currently. Maybe he's well known in tech circles, I don't know. This is a blog post from a job board site; at least put in something resembling a narrative. Yesterday we had a similarly promotional post…
Yep. I read it and thought I missed some pages, maybe accidentally scrolled down or something.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#216If you can’t read a hopeful, personal story without screaming “Survivorship Bias” and plunging headfirst into self-victimhood, good luck with the rest of your life!
HA! This made me smile.
Not a useful comment on my part, but it's nice to know when you're appreciated. :)
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Software is still the most well paid, expanding industry of the last 40 years. In a lot of the world it's nowhere near as well paid as most of the professions which have comparable requirements in terms of the amount academic study, vocational apprenticeship and natural aptitude needed.
Even in the U.S. I’m not sure where this myth of SWE being the most well paid industry comes from. Try many finance jobs and big law, also medicine in certain specializations. They all pay much better than 95% of all software engineering jobs. It’s also well known that to be an incredibly high paid SWE, you need to be at a large public tech company. That means you’re making a huge bet on their stock - the folks makin…
> Even in the U.S. I’m not sure where this myth of SWE being the most well paid industry comes from.
Because it basically is.
> Try many finance jobs and big law, also medicine in certain specializations.
Selected finance jobs aren't an industry, neither is “medicine in certain specializations”, neither is big law (law as a whole is an industry).
> It’s also well known that to be an incredibly high paid SWE, you need to be at a large public tech company
To be incredibly highly paid within SWE, sure. SWE is still highly paid compared to the rest of the world outside of those firms, and an unusually accessible high-paying field, without any post-baccalaureate education requirement, or even a firm requirement for an in-field bachelor's degree.
Note that there are similar (and often much bigger) cliffs in other highly-paid industries (which your allusion to “big law” implicitly recognizes.)
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. There are alot of new graduates looking at the world saying "I'm screwed". No you're not! I've survived the dot com bust as a DBA, and both recent oil busts while working in energy. You too, will be great if you're reading this. We need more hope, more love, more encouragement right now. Be a part of the solution instead of more doom and gloom (and criticism).
I read the article expecting there to be some inspirational story and the sour grapes were wrong, or some self-congratulatory mess not widely applicable to anyone and the sour grapes have a point... I don’t really know what that was. Right where you think the story described by the title would start, it just ends. The title is pretty inspirational in a “everything will be ok.” sort of way, but then instead of “here’s…
Things got better, of course. We were doing pretty well until 2008, when we weren’t doing so well. Then we did pretty well again. That’s the nature of life, isn’t it? It oscillates, like a sine wave, like the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe in and out.
Call it intentional vagueness if you want, but I think the author's point is: this too shall pass. The particulars of the author's story are likely so specific as to be useless.
There are ups, there are downs. Keep calm, and carry on.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#219I started during the 2008 recession. I think the people who hurt the most back then were the people who'd just attended 6 week Ruby on Rails bootcamps and gotten 70k/year jobs (which was a cliche at the time). Suddenly, that was no longer realistic. And even among them, the passionate people found a way. I got into tech with no education during the recession just on psychotic passion alone. I was working at but hacki…
> I intuit that if you are insanely dedicated enough the universe has a weird appreciation for that kind of thing, and eventually throws you a bone. I know it's wrong and irrational but everytime I've tried that it's worked, so there's some anecdotal personal truth. I've experienced this too, & entered the profession in 2011 without completing post secondary Essentially I believe it comes down to the fact that if you…
[deleted]
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#220I mean I understand where he's coming from, but this is peak survivorship bias. No, not everyone makes it. People can't get jobs, they can't pay rent and people will suffer and some will die as a result. That's a fact of how recessions go, and I think papering it over with 'everything will be OK' just further normalizes the boom/bust cycle and all of the damage it causes to working individuals.
The people screaming survivor ship bias are the least likely to make it. Now is the time to be doubling down your hours, focusing on whats important and proving your worth. Believe in yourself and make it through to the next boom. If you're lucky with your money you may even never have to worry about the cycle again
[deleted]