Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

muldoon.cloud

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 505 posts

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#131

Post by devnullbyte »

dleslie wrote: post #127
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…

I am almost 40, and I fully expect this to be my last software development job. Likewise, I've never had a negative performance review and am usually the top task-killer and bug-destroyer; but when recruiters call and find out I'm married with kids they can't seem to hang up fast enough. I'm saving as much as I can. The end is nigh.

Dam dude, what sort of people are you working with or interviewing for, that they see having a wife or family as a negative? That's just crazy. Is this valley based start ups or something of that ilk?

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#132

Post by adamparsons »

dleslie wrote: post #127
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…

I am almost 40, and I fully expect this to be my last software development job. Likewise, I've never had a negative performance review and am usually the top task-killer and bug-destroyer; but when recruiters call and find out I'm married with kids they can't seem to hang up fast enough. I'm saving as much as I can. The end is nigh.

I often wonder if it’s because they know you’ll have a healthy work/life balance and say no to ridiculous “we’re all in this together” pressures to work well past what’s in your contract, and hence aren’t as attractive for them to promise to employers looking for Ferrari’s on a ford budget

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#133

Post by qwerty456127 »

> I think of Go, Rust, Haskell, Erlang, Clojure, Kotlin, Scala as more hardcore languages.

I can tell about Scala: it can be insane hardcore if you want, but it can also be just "a much better Java" as easily - the weird parts are easy to avoid and the normal parts work better. Unless you are a Java veteran and also plan to hire more developers, using Scala instead of Java will save you much time and effort.

And Kotlin is, by design, kind of Scala minus the hardcore.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#134

Post by Ididntdothis »

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…

As someone in his 50s I agree that job search gets more difficult once you get older. But there are plenty of companies that have a lot of older developers once you start looking outside Silicon Valley startups. Maybe the jobs aren’t as glamorous but they are there. One good way is to work through a contracting agency that places you. There is way less age discrimination that way and a lot of contractors get converted to full time after a while. Happened to me and I know quite a few others.

The only painful thing to get over is the realization that you aren’t viewed anymore as the hotshot you thought you were in your twenties.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#135

Post by jimbokun »

pc86 wrote: post #70
llarsson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

Not the GP but I can hazard a guess: > What did you work on during those years? Line-of-business apps. VB.NET maybe? Or Java/J2EE type stuff. Probably jobs involving mainframes as core legacy systems? Things where "design" was more a function of where your WYSIWYG editor placed controls than conscious decisions. > Did you keep up with the industry? Enough to read HN, but not enough to keep learning new technologies a…

> Not the GP but I can hazard a guess:

Please don't, you have no relevant information so your speculation isn't helpful.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#136

Post by falcolas »

neogodless wrote: post #54
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…

I'm 40 and I don't suppose anyone has ever called me a 10x developer or a rockstar or a ninja, though I was recently described as having "a superpower to crush tickets." I have a feeling you have not applied "everywhere" in the United States, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I've never left my home state, and the deluge of recruiter spam on LinkedIn hasn't slowed down yet. And no I'm not an architect or team lead…

> the deluge of recruiter spam on LinkedIn hasn't slowed down yet

Recruiters spamming you is not a correlative metric for companies hiring you.

SV is worse than other locations, but even the midwest company I work for (I'm also over 40) much prefers to hire people straight out of college. They're cheaper, willing to work longer hours, and easily molded into an image the company wants.

EDIT: To provide a small anecdote about recruiters - I regularly get Google and Facebook recruiters hitting me up on LinkedIn, even though I know I would never be hired by them. I don't live in a state where they have an office, have no plans to move, and don't meet some of their publicly announced filters. I'm up front about this to the recruiters, yet I still get spam from them.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#137

Post by faizshah »

llarsson wrote: post #33
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 de…

A lot of the coders over 40 that I know who are experiencing difficulty finding work are coders who spent years working at the same place and chose specialization over staying current. They chose to become the J2EE guy with 10 years experience at a fortune 500 or the off the shelf ecommerce specialist. Being overly loyal to these companies and seeking job security left them with little career security at companies who are quickly being convinced to hire young former Amazon and Google employees to replace them.

Based on their experiences I think the best advice is to stay current in your skills, find ways to apply those skills at work so you can get those lines on your resume, and choose to be a generalist rather than specializing. Don’t be loyal to your language or framework, demand for skills in software is more a function of whats fashionable than anything else. Look at where Perl is, many Perl coders were loyal to Perl instead of learning Python.

Most importantly, take a look at the ages of your coworkers. Is it really smart to be loyal to a company where there’s few people over 40 working your job? My Dad stayed at a company for 10 years and only got a raise once. Be smart, at some places you’re just a line item.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#138

Post by jordanpg »

engrsrce wrote: post #122
jordanpg wrote: post #24

> That’s all that Agile means to me. This is the most concise, honest summary of "agile" I've ever come across. Well put. The amount of person-hours spent bikeshedding about various sundry "agile" procedural details is absolutely breathtaking. A perpetual, real-life Dilbert punchline taken seriously by armies of *Managers.

Well that's pretty naive. I've worked with some pretty good teams that wouldn't work any other way. I suspect you've only worked at places that abused agile as described here... https://ronjeffries.com/articles/language-of-hatred/

No, I've worked in places where it works just fine.

The point is that, at the end of the day, it boils down elaborate processes to break things up into two-week chunks of work. That's it. That's the bit I thought was a concise, excellent summary.

Sometimes, for certain flavors of apps and tech and teams, that model works splendidly. Sometimes, it is silly administrative window dressing that is completely disconnected from the reality of what the team is doing. In my experience, it's usually the latter -- and the teams work just fine _in spite_ of the fact that everyone is pretending they are doing "scrum" or "agile".

I'd say what is naive is the belief that such a closely scripted, narrowly defined workflow is a one-sized-fits-all solution to optimizing teams under all circumstances and contexts.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#139

Post by wonderwonder »

mozey wrote: post #16
twic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally find dynamic languages far more legible Maybe you're a 2xer though.

"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" -Brian Kernighan Over time I've come to appreciate this sentiment. Banging out clever code super fast isn't that important... Spending some time up front thinking about types and architecture pays off in the long run. Especially for server side c…

I very much like this quote. Used to work with a team of contractors out of Eastern Europe. They were exceptional programmers but wrote code using obscure language features and in such an odd way that now that they are gone, every time someone has to debug some of their code its a very frustrating process. There are definitely times to use 'clever' coding practices but nine times out of 10, just write it simply and focus on readability. Your team will thank you and you will thank yourself a couple years down the road.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#140

Post by overgard »

With rule #2, (knowledge not transferring), that's always a sign you're not working somewhere good, or you're in a role that will stunt your growth. You really should be able to transfer a lot of what you learn. If you're stuck with a bunch of proprietary gunk that does the same thing as open source, but worse, good engineering management knows to replace that stuff because it will inevitably drive talent away. Or at the very least rotate people through those roles. I know I've left jobs where I've been stuck maintaining legacy systems while the rest of the company moved on to open standards because if you do that for years it's like slow career suicide.
Post reply on HN