321–330 of 505 posts
Rules of Thumb for a 1x Developer During work hours stay away from: * HN * Facebook * Twitter * Reddit * Any other thing constantly distracting you and taking away your attention from your job Congratulations, you are now 3-10x developer.
Quite surprising take on the languages. > When to use Python or Ruby > Python and Ruby seem to me to be pretty similar in that they’re scripting languages and dynamically typed and seemed like the greatest thing in the 00’s. You use them when speed is more important than legibility or debugging. I'd say you pick them when productivity and time to market is important. I personally find dynamic languages far more legib…
People overrate the elegance and readability of languages. You can write elegant and inelegant Java. I've seen python code that is totally unmaintainable and python code that's some of the most elegant out there. You can find Rails code that is some of the most indecipherable spaghetti out there despite Ruby being such an elegant language (the project had Fat Controllers, Fat Views and Fat Stored Procedures...yikes).…
> The exception to this is JS
JavaScript is beautiful. You're crazy.
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 didn't become a developer until just after my 40th birthday. I'm 45 now. I'm doing just fine.
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…
We have several engineers on our team that are 40+ that are either senior or principal developers. Age never really came up in the discussion. Just their experience and how they did in the interview when talking about that experience and when encountering new problems.
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> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.
Becuase top talent usually don't get desperate. It's a bad way to judge someone, of course, but there aren't many good ways, and when hiring, you want to play it safe: not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad. So, if you notice something that looks like it might have been a red flag, you take notice.
is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing).
"when hiring, you want to play it safe"
personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone.
i prefer to lean into strengths, not try to shore up weaknesses.
"top talent usually don't get desperate" there are many reasons why people look for jobs, on their own timing, and with their own reasons. reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more. it's lazy.
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I'm 40 and a developer for 15 years and didn't make it past Amazon's initial code assessment. One of the problems was a floodfill algorithm, which I've never used before. Couldn't quite figure it out on my own, but found the answer in Google in about 5 minutes, which is what I would do in real life faced with this problem. I don't understand the purpose of asking people to memorize a bunch of algorithms they will pro…
Those tests aren't really about engineering skill. The interviewer is checking to see how much you want the position, how hard of a worker you are, and how smart you are. If you really want the position, you will put a lot of effort into researching what the interview will entail. If you're a hard worker, you will intensively study for the interview. If you're smart, you'll be able to apply the material you studied t…
A sensible knowledge and performance evaluation would involve pair coding on limited scope, immediate, real problems, not BS trivia.
Interviewing is a two-way street.. the signals given-off in the interview process should be taken in as a totality by the interviewee as well. If they see bad signs, they should run in the opposite direction rather than get sucked into a bad environment.
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> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.
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:…
Rules of Thumb for a 1x Developer During work hours stay away from: * HN * Facebook * Twitter * Reddit * Any other thing constantly distracting you and taking away your attention from your job Congratulations, you are now 3-10x developer.
> Congratulations, you are now 3-10x developer. Congratulations. You are still getting paid the same. Boosts in productivity need to come with boosts in pay, otherwise the logical thing to do is to scale back your effort to a point where the amount you get done matches the amount you get paid for.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 40 and a developer for 15 years and didn't make it past Amazon's initial code assessment. One of the problems was a floodfill algorithm, which I've never used before. Couldn't quite figure it out on my own, but found the answer in Google in about 5 minutes, which is what I would do in real life faced with this problem. I don't understand the purpose of asking people to memorize a bunch of algorithms they will pro…
Those tests aren't really about engineering skill. The interviewer is checking to see how much you want the position, how hard of a worker you are, and how smart you are. If you really want the position, you will put a lot of effort into researching what the interview will entail. If you're a hard worker, you will intensively study for the interview. If you're smart, you'll be able to apply the material you studied t…
Are those interview processes really optimising for candidates who are willing and able to spend silly amounts of time creating an illusion of being super-keen?