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

201–210 of 505 posts

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#201

Post by dleslie »

mypalmike wrote: post #196
dleslie wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make it a habit of trying not to be dishonest. :)

It's not legal for prospective employers to ask you these kinds of questions. If you're talking about your wife and kids during the interview process, you're doing it wrong. My last round of interviews was at age 46. Went from being (voluntarily) unemployed to a FAANG job. I had to do the same stuff the 20-somethings do: practiced hackerrank, answered stupid whiteboard dynamic programming questions that have nothing…

They can ask related questions which might reveal this information.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23031508

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#202

Post by mixmastamyk »

theli0nheart wrote: post #169
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confidence and desperation hardly ever align. Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky. Standard:…

> Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky. Disclaimer: I'm saying this for your own benefit, but…

Sounds like you're arguing based on the "real world", where as the grandparent is based on people's perceptions of it. That perspective is widespread however, whether fair, accurate or not.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#203

Post by lotash »

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 a SWE hiring manager. I love to hire older, experienced devs. I want somebody who can be self-directed and can effectively talk to stakeholders to come up with a good solution. My experience has been that (some!) older developers are more able to do this.

That said, if you're an older dev that hasn't kept up with the times, I'm prob not going to hire you.

I even work in SV :)

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#204

Post by taude »

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…

Being in my 40s, too. Also started my career out as a really solid dev working for the top companies in the business in the 90s (probably one of the best).

I found my dream job again, after getting stuck somewhere after the former company I worked for was acquired by big NY finance.

I was fairly lucky, because I was still pretty relevant, on my game, studied all that college alg stuff again, and I even was flown out to FAANG companies for interviews, etc.,

But I still interviewed at 40 places to get a single offer.

Tech also changes so much, that someone with 10 years of the wrong experience (legacy tech), is less important than 2 years of the vNext tech-stack.

You need to really a) lock in what people are doing for technical coding tests these days, sure it's gate-keeping, but it is what it is b) make sure you've gotten some coaching on how to answer a lot of the soft-skill questions (you know, the fluffy stuff that devs typically think don't matter, but that are used to build an impression of you speaking....lots of websites out there.). And you'll need to change your mindset a bit, likely, into thinking like your younger-self, and not like hey, I'm 20+ years experience, etc. Pretend like you have 5 years experience, and go for it.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#205

Post by jimbokun »

Filligree wrote: post #31
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"…

As long as you can avoid Spring, Java is a great development platform!

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#206

Post by vsareto »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #108
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.

I remember thinking that the internal wiki at anzn was one of it's best workplace features. This was something used by just about every team and rarely needed intervention from internal developers to operate smoothly. This was prior to the migration though. I can't imagine how much upheaval there was resulting from the migration, language considerations aside. This is probably one moment where tech concerns should ha…

Much of that depends on their justification. It's entirely possible it was made only for broad risk-avoiding reasons due to PHP's reputation at the time (anyone could have "safely" made that decision, you don't need infosec skills to make that call). They could have done a detailed inventory of what they use and found a bad history of bugs like multiple auth bypasses, trivial RCE. Or they might have audited a few of the products themselves and saw the code quality was typically poor and prone to security issues.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#207

Post by the-pigeon »

collyw wrote: post #184
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 have noticed that I was the 10x developer - when I was working on a system that I designed an built. Now I am fixing someone else code and he gets 10 times more done than me. Is that because he is smarter than me and get more done, or because he is worse than me and writes code that is obscure for someone else to understand quickly? Obviously its a subjective question, but volume of features completed isn't the onl…

The idea of a "10x" developer isn't suppose to be taken so literally.

My personal definition of it is just a developer that doesn't get hung up on issues. Majority of developers I've worked with can get stuck on the same problem for a week that a 10xer can solve in a couple of hours.

The difference is the 10xer understands the system and tools enough that they don't get lost in the weeds. And the other developers do get lost in the weeds. Which of course means a 10xer in one environment won't be it in another environment if they are dropped into it without adequate time for training.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#208

Post by lotash »

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.

Are you sure that's the reason? I work in the Bay Area, most people at the company have kids. They're all productive.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#209

Post by cloverich »

Kudos for the open and honest assessment, I enjoyed reading it. Some feedback for your journey: Drop the focus on languages. Choose one (popular) language and focus on understanding it well. The best thing you can do, is find some open source project with high quality code in that language, and study it. Slowly, how long it takes does not matter. The end result is you will pick up best practices and styles you did not know exist. Concomitantly, study a few frameworks in your chosen language. Ex: If you select python and are doing web development, learn how Django and Flask work. Learn how the requests library or a forms library works. By reading good code, and studying frameworks and libraries that solve peoples real problems, you will build a foundation for how to put together higher quality and longer lasting code. That will not only make you better as a programmer, and better in your chosen language, but you'll start to find that a substantial portion of what you learn will start to transfer.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#210

Post by marcosdumay »

mgkimsal wrote: post #153
ptero wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Cho…

> Learn what problems the company is solving and help them within their constraints, including using their tools and languages even if they look suboptimal. within reason and 'on day one', yes, agreed. However, if you're hired in because of your skills/accomplishments, but you don't measure up, and it's because their tools/process/code is demonstrably bad, those are constraints that should be on the table for discuss…

Bad ways to point a problem that will make me think you are a 40 years junior with 20 times of 1 year of experience:

- Your stack is bad.

- You should use X.

- Your process is wrong.

A sure way to sound like an experienced senior developer:

- Your stack has this flaw; we can live with it by doing X but that is at the expense of Y1. A migration to Z will cost Y2, that is much cheaper on the long run.

But you'll probably conclude that Y2 isn't much cheaper on the long run anyway. If it's that case that it is cheaper, and even then people above you do not want the change, then you do have a real problem.

Post reply on HN