The line I like - I decide to go to a job fair on campus, still feeling awful. - Don't do that with COVID19, you might end up killing the person who hired you, so when you show up for your first day, there might not be anyone to welcome you there.
I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
251–260 of 322 posts
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some companies write code that's public, and then, while it might still suck, there is at least some motivation for improving it, and a better chance of it being paletable.
The time it takes to make simple updates should be enough motivation. I just spent the best part of a day adding a simple dialog before submitting a form. Took forever to get the development environment put together to run the code locally then trying to understand the mess of JavaScript in the relevant function with all it's nested callbacks to add a couple of lines of code. I tried refactoring it a bit, hopefully i…
I agree, but somehow most of my managers over the years don't. :-(
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#253I 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.
This is an unfalsifiable assertion. It also implies that if you failed, you just didn't want it hard enough. That's not a message that people who are having trouble finding a job need to hear.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#254In the age of RSUs, graduating in the middle of a recession is financially incredible IF you managed to get the job before all the hiring freezes AND it is at one of the publicly traded big N companies with good trade volume. Your RSU price is lower, you get more stock units for the same dollar amount at the time of joining in your initial grant (arguably much more important than refreshers). I have a friend who rece…
Sure, if you time everything right, you can make out very well. All these things have to line up.
(FYI I bought MSFT stock for half that, back in 2017.)
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really have a specialty. The last 3 years I've been doing Identity and Access Management. Before that I've done everything from physical security systems, insurance, enterprise web development, truck dispatching, point of sale... all over the place really. I'm aware of how awful this is going to sound, but I'm totally unfamiliar with the process of applying to tons of places and getting rejected. When I'm sho…
Hey I am a bit younger than you but have a very similar resume of working contracts, never applying to FAANGs and reaching out to people/networks when I am looking for work. I definitely feel like I'm doing well but it would be great to speak to someone else who has succeeded at this sort of "alternative" career path. Is there a way I can reach you to ask for some specific advice? Or would you contact me? ritchiea at…
I'm someone who's started the traditional career path and doesn't like it. I've halfheartedly started a consulting firm, and I'm spending time shifting my focus to that. I'd also love to chat with you.
thomas dot spader at gmail dot com, if you'd like to
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#256I 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 went through a bootcamp too.
I'd look around the room and "Man at least half of these folks have no chance.".
It is very much a thing that for most people you need to be "INTERESTED" in how this works for it to work out as a career / push through frustration and have the tenacity to keep at it.
Just programming as a job with tasks like a garbage man or something where you go do the thing and never do it if you don't have to ... just is a rough way to learn.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wish it was like that in the UK. I work with some pretty talented people and we're paid what would be considered peanuts in the bay area (but fairly standard here), and even then half of us have just been furloughed. Lots of code sucks but that's often due to unrealistic deadlines as much as the talents of the developers.
Code sucks everywhere. Unless you're working on a library or something personal, then there's no (or very few) organisations that are churning out 'academically pure' code. The UK doesn't software industry doesn't have dibs on that.
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Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#258Programming for the web is my primary career. I first got into it late 1997. I am astonished at how incompetent it is. The fact the OP made a career out of it and made some money is hardly amazing. For the level of talent required contrasted against the average compensation I am surprised not everybody is trying it. You too could be earning 6 figures in a low cost of living economy after completing a boot camp and 2…
I think you're overestimating the demand for junior engineers with no formal college education. It's tough for them to get in, especially in LCOL areas where the job market isn't competitive.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#259Programming for the web is my primary career. I first got into it late 1997. I am astonished at how incompetent it is. The fact the OP made a career out of it and made some money is hardly amazing. For the level of talent required contrasted against the average compensation I am surprised not everybody is trying it. You too could be earning 6 figures in a low cost of living economy after completing a boot camp and 2…
I think you're overestimating the demand for junior engineers with no formal college education. It's tough for them to get in, especially in LCOL areas where the job market isn't competitive.
This is true, but it's still significantly easier than doing the same for any other high paying profession, where education is an almost guaranteed requirement.
Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too
#260Programming for the web is my primary career. I first got into it late 1997. I am astonished at how incompetent it is. The fact the OP made a career out of it and made some money is hardly amazing. For the level of talent required contrasted against the average compensation I am surprised not everybody is trying it. You too could be earning 6 figures in a low cost of living economy after completing a boot camp and 2…
I'm not highly experienced in this realm but I sometimes wonder if the liability in our industry is misaligned which may cause many of these symptoms.
When a company faces a huge security breach due to negligence, who pays the cost? I've known many engineers rightfully pointing out necessary work to prevent security issues that have to negotiate with product owners and business stakeholders to find time to perform such work. And guess who never gets the time to work on those issues?
How many companies actually audit their dependencies and run their own package management infrastructure to protect themselves against liabilities?
If developers were liable then companies would be obligated to hire a professional engineer, pay their insurance, and there would be repercussions for avoiding their recommendations. I suspect companies would be much more cautious about "releasing early, releasing often," and "moving fast and breaking things," if there were penalties for making poor decisions that affect the safety and property of people.