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Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

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Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#31

Post by Filligree »

vsareto wrote: post #17

>One great example of this is the debacle of the Amazon internal wiki migration. Back in 2015, the Amazon InfoSec team banned PHP at the company. Oof. To be fair, Java is probably way easier to code review.

Much depends on the Java. Having spent a lot of time on personal projects using the language, it doesn't deserve its reputation -- Java may 'require' an IDE to avoid spending too much time on boilerplate, but modern Java is a good language and the programming experience once you do have that IDE is one of the best, most effective I know.

At the same time, it's absolutely possible for codebases to become "enterprisey" to the point where even the tiniest change takes weeks. Some of the libraries out there use absolutely horrifying patterns.

If you're just coding for yourself, you can avoid those. In a company maybe not so much, and even though the company would be better off avoiding them, maybe they have old code remaining from when such things were considered good.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#33

Post by llarsson »

noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

If you chose the word "desperate" deliberately, would you mind telling us/me why someone with two-to-three decades of experience becomes "desperate" for a job?

What did you work on during those years? Did you keep up with the industry?

I am asking out of interest for both you and me. For you, I want to help you regain confidence that is rightfully yours, because someone with your experience should not need to feel desperate. For me, I want to know if there are objectively speaking potential career missteps one should avoid.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#34

Post by stu2010 »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #23

"To replace out MediaWiki with a Java-based alternative (XWiki) ended up taking a total fo 24 dev-years over 4+ calendar years for the team, not counting the interruptions to pretty much every other team at Amazon as their pages were getting constantly migrated and un-migrated" I would love to hear more about this. I'm guessing that's a cost of at least $4M? How was this approved? How did they allow it to continue fo…

Amazon's total all-in cost per dev is almost certainly >$300k per year, so more like >$7 million if that's an accurate number.

As far as how it gets approved, that's not enough money to really register at Amazon's scale. I've seen waste similar to that at companies much, much smaller than Amazon that goes entirely un-noticed.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#35

Post by joelbluminator »

noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

The only problem I could imagine with being 40 is a certain attitude; if you come to interviews too confident and give the impression you're there to teach everyone and show them what's what, it could be off putting; even if you ARE more experienced and are hired as a senior, the people hiring you want to know you're gonna be a good sport and not MR know it all. Or it could be something else completely. But I would definitely explore attitude some more.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#36

Post by nsfyn55 »

I don't think the author is a 1x programmer. He has learned the first secret of 10x programming. It's not about being a genius programmer. Its about being an efficiency expert and a problem solver. Soft skills play an outsized role here. I have seen immensely talented developers with hard skills for days manage to deliver nothing over long periods of time.

Learning that rules are guidelines not religious artifacts handed to us via burning bush is a big step. I can't tell you how many programmers I've seen hobble their own productivity by having overly aggressive code reviews, strict style guidelines, or requiring more testing than is necessary.

Being an outstanding software engineer is 99% knowing when to tenaciously stand your ground("storing state that way will not allow us to scale horizontally. It will save us a few hours now but in order to achieve our larger objectives will take 1000x the effort to unwind; we have to find another way") and when exerting control isn't helping("You can't put this simple, but incredibly important, time sensitive piece of software into production until it has been reviewed by our 6 committees, is re-written to use the companies globally enforced, yet questionably valuable style guideline, and has 113% code coverage")

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#37

Post by bbrree66 »

noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

Maybe you just aren't as good as you think? Maybe you need to work on interview skills? 4 of the 4 companies I've worked for have had more people over 40 than under 40 who were devs. Blaming the industry for discriminating on age is very easily disproven by looking at all the people over 40 who are devs...

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#39

Post by theli0nheart »

stu2010 wrote: post #34
cellularmitosis wrote: post #23

"To replace out MediaWiki with a Java-based alternative (XWiki) ended up taking a total fo 24 dev-years over 4+ calendar years for the team, not counting the interruptions to pretty much every other team at Amazon as their pages were getting constantly migrated and un-migrated" I would love to hear more about this. I'm guessing that's a cost of at least $4M? How was this approved? How did they allow it to continue fo…

Amazon's total all-in cost per dev is almost certainly >$300k per year, so more like >$7 million if that's an accurate number. As far as how it gets approved, that's not enough money to really register at Amazon's scale. I've seen waste similar to that at companies much, much smaller than Amazon that goes entirely un-noticed.

> As far as how it gets approved, that's not enough money to really register at Amazon's scale. I've seen waste similar to that at companies much, much smaller than Amazon that goes entirely un-noticed.

Maybe I'm being dense, but this still doesn't register for me. If 4+ calendar years of work for a single team continues with no noticeable progress, then there's an organizational issue, no matter the size of the company.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#40

Post by klohto »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #23

"To replace out MediaWiki with a Java-based alternative (XWiki) ended up taking a total fo 24 dev-years over 4+ calendar years for the team, not counting the interruptions to pretty much every other team at Amazon as their pages were getting constantly migrated and un-migrated" I would love to hear more about this. I'm guessing that's a cost of at least $4M? How was this approved? How did they allow it to continue fo…

I don't understand why are corporations obsessed with decommissioning wikis. When I was at Red Hat, they tried to decommission local country wiki in favor of their company-wide wiki (Mojo, absolute shit by the way). They tried for about 2 years, then finally somebody said "what the fuck are we doing" and the migration was stopped. I believe the banner "Decommissioning soon" still hangs there.
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