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Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

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Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#211

Post by joncrane »

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…

Our biggest rockstar on the team is 60. He's incredible. I have worked with workhorses before. Careful, eager to learn, and prodigious.

This guy blows those "workhorses" out of the water. He's a Clydesdale. He literally makes everyone else on the team (including me) look bad in comparison. He's THAT good.

He acknowledges that due to his age, he has to work harder to prove himself. On our current team, he no longer has anything to prove, yet puts in rock star performances day after day after day. I could go on but you get the point. Don't give up!

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#212

Post by vonmoltke »

scarface74 wrote: post #158
falcolas wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 anecdot…

I’m 45, and was last in the job market in 2018 and before that in 2016. I’m in Atlanta. The last two times I looked for your standard senior/lead enterprise dev roles it took less than two weeks to get an offer just by using local recruiters. Edit: There is a huge difference between random spam from recruiters who throw a big net and working with local boutique recruiters who have relationships with local firms. I ig…

> I’m 45, and was last in the job market in 2018 and before that in 2016. I’m in Atlanta. The last two times I looked for your standard senior/lead enterprise dev roles it took less than two weeks to get an offer just by using local recruiters.

I think I should have tried the local recruiter approach back when I was in Dallas and getting bupkis for hits. Unfortunately, I bought too heavily into the "lol recruiters r trash" meme and didn't consider the type of recruiter before dismissing them wholesale.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#213

Post by dleslie »

lotash wrote: post #208
dleslie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Part of it is that I don't live in California, and the tech culture where I am (Vancouver, BC) and the industry I prefer (Entertainment) is somewhat different.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#214

Post by notokay »

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…

>Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped

That scares the hell out of me. I started working in IT at 22 and now I'm 30.

I'm SRE and I think of myself as a useless lamer compared to the real 10x guys around. It gets heavier every year.

I got bagdes CCNP/OSCP/RHCE/CKA/AWS DevOps Pro/etc only to confirm that I know at least something. (I don't tell anyone about them so I don't become known as a paper tiger.) On my way to CCIE.

I study things and write code for ~2-4 hours every day after work and ~8 hours on non-working days.

Maybe by the time I'm 35 and finally became a decent SRE, I hope that I can do a real work in big company like FAANG. And no one will hire me because I'm too old.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#215

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#216

Post by sbarre »

twic wrote: post #47
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…

This week it's patio11's turn to tell us that big companies are big because they need to be big, not because they're inefficient: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1255371954443505665 It's always satisfying to read reports from the trenches demonstrating the exact opposite.

Keep in mind stories like the wiki one are anecdotal (meaning it's not representative of all projects), and in fact this is covered in both Patrick's tweet thread and Dan Luu's linked essay ( https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ ).

So while they do their best to not have _every_ initiative go this way, large companies - even the mythical FAANGs - will inevitably have moments like this wiki debacle, and they need to be able to absorb them without material impact on the bottom line or having to fire a bunch of people for trying and failing.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#217

Post by icedchai »

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…

Have you looked for software jobs in a mature industry, like a bank, insurance company, etc?

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#218

Post by throwphoton »

scarface74 wrote: post #158
falcolas wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 anecdot…

I’m 45, and was last in the job market in 2018 and before that in 2016. I’m in Atlanta. The last two times I looked for your standard senior/lead enterprise dev roles it took less than two weeks to get an offer just by using local recruiters. Edit: There is a huge difference between random spam from recruiters who throw a big net and working with local boutique recruiters who have relationships with local firms. I ig…

I'm in my 40s in the SF Bay Area and recently landed a new software development job. The process took several months.

My initial interviews were disastrous; it had been many years since my last job search and I didn't know I wasn't prepared for the "leetcode era". Drilling on "leetcode medium" problems with a time limit got me to the point where I was at least in the game that's being played nowadays.

It wasn't pretty, but eventually I got around to progressing and getting an offer instead of getting "nope'd" at the early stages. The job-interview repertoire has definitely changed in the last 15 years though, and it takes some work to get conversant with it.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#219

Post by scarface74 »

taude wrote: post #204
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…

I’m in my 40s, I have had dozens of interviews. My non rejection rate from application (via a local recruiter) -> phone screen -> in person interview is close to zero. Not because I am a special snowflake, but I’ve built up a network of coworkers, former managers, and local trusted recruiters.

I have never in my life had anything approaching a hard algorithm coding interview and I didn’t know such a thing existed until three years ago after being on HN and reading r/cscareerquestions.

I’m a standard enterprise dev living in Atlanta. Pre-Covid, the job market has usually been good for me since 2000 when I got my second job after leaving my first job I got based on an internship.

There were even jobs/contracts available between 2008-2011

I think I am above average soft skill interviewer FWIW.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#220

Post by greenshackle2 »

karakanb wrote: post #144
kumarvvr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small question. Is PHP still a preferred platform for any sort of complex web development? I have never even looked at the php site or docs, but I am curious. In this day and age, is there a subset of Apps that PHP is suited for?

The hatred against PHP seems to be coming from the people that only know the old days of the language and haven't checked it recently. I'd say PHP is quite relevant for any kind of web-apps these days; the language has evolved greatly in many fields, you have a huge community and there are tons of libraries to get anything done. Especially with Laravel, you can get a fully-functioning web application with a full auth…

As someone who maintains an extension for PHP, I hate it because the Zend C APIs are an undocumented dumpster fire, and PHP's basic data structure, zend_hash, is a weird hash type with a str/int union key type and an awkward API.

I also hate it because I hit more memory issues (double free, unitialized reads, etc.) in the language and core libs with PHP than any other high level language I'm maintaining similar extensions for.

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