I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#271

Post by jrimbault » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

scottLobster wrote: post #241

andreilys wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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” Also known as survivorship bias.

Not necessarily. A prerequisite for winning any game is showing up. Those who show up most often are therefore more likely to win. Someone who practices a skill for 20 hours a week for a year will have had 1040 hours of practice vs 258 hours of practice for someone who practices 5 hours a week, and that linear increase in time will likely produce an exponential increase in skill as knowledge builds on itself. Assumin…

Assuming we have defined "success" and the person A will multiply their chance of success by 2 after each try.

That leaves almost zero chances of success.

Success, however we choose to define it, is in large part a result of luck. Skill, to a much lesser degree.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#272

Post by kokey » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

I also lived through the dotcom boom and bust and even remember the recession that impacted hardware vendors in the 90s. What we might see now is certainly more like dotcom than 2008.

Dotcom was a time that a lot of investment chased a lot of speculative business in technology which led to very high demand for anything looking even remotely like computer skills and paying them well plus stock options. It had to run out of steam and come tumbling down at some point, the end of Y2K was when it ran out of new coal and the steam stopped not long after that.

Investors then had to beat each other to the door. It impacted everyone in the industry but the first to go were the businesses not actually making money, then those who had clients which consisted of a lot of businesses not making money.

There were plenty of survivors, those who made money or those who could trim their expenses and make money or those who could make money out of helping others trim their expenses. People who worked for these kept their jobs. It also became easier for them to hire people. Pay was depressed, but it emptied out the industry from people who weren't actually that interested in or that good at technology.

I joked that those people who got themselves Microsoft certifications just for the dotcom salaries could go back to being real estate agents. That turned out to be bad joke.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#273

Post by kerhackernews » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

Things will get better but the complete lack of a social safety net here is completely ridiculous.

The hoarding of capital by the super rich and business elites is disgusting. There are better and more ethical ways to structure out economy.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#274

Post by flomo » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #247

seisvelas wrote: post #207

I 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…

Dev Bootcamp popularized rails bootcamps, and they weren't even founded until 2012. The bootcamp "scene" definitely wasn't around in 2008.

Maybe they weren't called bootcamps, but these short webdev training courses have been around since the late 1990s.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#275

Post by greeniron » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #91

Consultant32452 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pushing 40, graduated high school in 2000. I heard a lot of the same "wisdom." For some reason I just really wanted to be a software developer so I stuck with it even though the dot com bubble was in full catastrophe mode. I'm glad I did, but I can't claim magic wisdom. I don't know how kids are supposed to get good life/career advice. I surely didn't. Perhaps the only thing I can reasonably suggest is that peopl…

What kind of job do you do? You sound like me, with the exception that I'm at the start of my career and am getting rejected everywhere the past year. I've been a coding bootcamp instructor and was praised by students for my communication. My friends are mostly entrepreneurs, consultants and business people and I talk quite a bit about business with them and my coding skills relatively to that are alright.

maybe try entry level project management jobs. i have a business and computer science degree, always more inclined towards the business side rather than technical or coding, and project management is perfect for that, plus it pays well.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#276

Post by diN0bot » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #237

austincheney wrote: post #119

Programming 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 started around a similar time frame, and was around during the dot-com boom. One dot-bomb company was "growing so fast" (lots of hype, almost no revenues...) that it would hire almost anyone off the street. We also hired a lot of good people who had their skills misapplied for developing a product that made little sense. $millions were wasted. People today would be astonished at the tech interviews back then. It wa…

Hiring processes have really changed since then. What do you think of them now?

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#277

Post by sosborn » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

jrimbault wrote: post #271

scottLobster wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. A prerequisite for winning any game is showing up. Those who show up most often are therefore more likely to win. Someone who practices a skill for 20 hours a week for a year will have had 1040 hours of practice vs 258 hours of practice for someone who practices 5 hours a week, and that linear increase in time will likely produce an exponential increase in skill as knowledge builds on itself. Assumin…

Assuming we have defined "success" and the person A will multiply their chance of success by 2 after each try. That leaves almost zero chances of success. Success, however we choose to define it, is in large part a result of luck. Skill, to a much lesser degree.

Luck and skill aren't mutually exclusive. They work together.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#278

Post by ianai » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

kerhackernews wrote: post #273

Things will get better but the complete lack of a social safety net here is completely ridiculous. The hoarding of capital by the super rich and business elites is disgusting. There are better and more ethical ways to structure out economy.

Agreed. This should be grounds for declaring “trickle down economics” disproved and downright bankrupt. How many times do we need to see stock buybacks not help the problem while also not creating jobs? Or hospitals firing people for talking about life threatening work conditions? Or hospitals closing because treating covid patients isn’t profitable enough? Etc etc

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#279

Post by scottLobster » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

jrimbault wrote: post #271

scottLobster wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. A prerequisite for winning any game is showing up. Those who show up most often are therefore more likely to win. Someone who practices a skill for 20 hours a week for a year will have had 1040 hours of practice vs 258 hours of practice for someone who practices 5 hours a week, and that linear increase in time will likely produce an exponential increase in skill as knowledge builds on itself. Assumin…

Assuming we have defined "success" and the person A will multiply their chance of success by 2 after each try. That leaves almost zero chances of success. Success, however we choose to define it, is in large part a result of luck. Skill, to a much lesser degree.

Maybe with a uselessly broad definition of "luck", as in "lucky to be born at the right time for software to be a viable career" or "lucky to be alive, the dead can't earn any money at all".

But if you think that successful engineers are only successful because they just magically got hired one day, and if they never learned any science, math, or got an engineering degree and put in zero or near-zero effort they would have had the same odds of been hired, that's just not a logical argument. Same goes for other professions.

We all start with the hand we're dealt by the universe, but it is possible to improve one's odds quite substantially given time and good decisions (that's arguably the definition of a "good decision").

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#280

Post by austincheney » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #258

austincheney wrote: post #119

Programming 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.

That depends on how you define junior. Some people define that as less than certain years of experience on a resume. Some people define it in technical terms, in scope of particular competencies, or terms of interview performance.

Since there is no uniform definition of competence my personal definition is anybody who does this job but either advocates fear of writing original code or who cannot write any code without a superficial abstraction (jQuery, React, Angular) is a junior regardless of years of experience. I also know there are a lot of people who disagree with that definition.