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My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

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Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#111

Post by ivalm »

qchris wrote: post #77
troughway wrote: post #20

Should "mid-career" software developers still be focused on low-balling themselves with having to do "career growth" things like this fellow, or should they plan their exit strategy to get out of that career trajectory entirely? Assuming mid-career is actually mid-career and not the ageist SV type of mid-career.

Just to be clear, there's not a subtext to this question (and I'm less that two years out of school so I'm pretty sure it doesn't apply to me anyway), but would you mind laying out your approximate ranges for mid-career in both of those categories? Are you assuming a retirement age of mid-60s? Mid-70s? Between 5-10 years in a field? 10-20? Does it correlate with a particular approach or competence in their field? How…

Presumably full length of career is ~40 years. Presumably “mid” is ~half, so 20YOE? There is a claim that SV culture is biased against older people so this might cut effective max age to... idk, 50? So mid career is then ~10-15 YOE?

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#112

Post by watwut »

ramraj07 wrote: post #108
smt88 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That team lead (and companies with similar thinking) need to learn that obsessive/workaholic devs are not more productive. If coding consumes your paid and free time, you're generally not cranking out new CRUD features requested by the marketing team. You're doing pet projects, learning new languages, or getting lost in bikeshedding, like writing a new JS framework because you think the current list sucks. That means…

Generalizations galore on both sides? There are probably as many 40hr Devs that just want to phone it in as there are effective ones. It's possible youve learned to weed out the former but they do exist. Similarly I'm probably one of those Workaholics, but I make an active effort not to waste time. However I do work with good effective 40hr devs and I try to make sure that we are all on the same velocity. The remaini…

90 hour a week means that the person is either not sleeping enough. Sleep deprivation means you cant be performant fully. Or the person did not had a single free day in weeks while working 12 hours a day. There are the people who do stupid decision just out of being tired.

Just about the only way I have seen people work this much and not be overly tired drag was when significant bulk of time was spent socializing and playing around. Otherwise said, it was not actually work, but it was clocked in as work.

And at this point, there is enough evidence that crunch is productive for few weeks and then productivity fails.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#113

Post by square_usual »

nnq wrote: post #94
georgeburdell wrote: post #29

I look at that resume and I wonder if it didn't hurt more than it helped; it's form over function, and a bit corny. The fact that he got multiple offers in two months shows how strong the software job market is. I'm several years younger, but a staff-level hardware engineer at a second tier company (top tier being FAANG). I've had an incredibly difficult time jumping companies --- 2 years and counting. Despite being…

> hardware engineer Software's different because you can hire-fast & fire-fast. Unless you have broken processes and incompetent people surrounding the new hire, you can easily determine if they're good enough. Hack, it's even worth it to hire 2 devs for everyone you need and fire the worst performing one in a few months (flip a coin if they're pretty equal and can't afford them both). Easier to get fired, easier to…

> Hack, it's even worth it to hire 2 devs for everyone you need and fire the worst performing one in a few months (flip a coin if they're pretty equal and can't afford them both).

That is awful. Don't mess with other people's lives just because you can't make a decision.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#114

Post by rorykoehler »

MattGaiser wrote: post #33
Thorentis wrote: post #25

Is it true you still need an "open source coding resume" by mid-career stage? I can understand using that to give you an advantage for entry-level roles, but by "mid-career" shouldn't your experience and achievements in past roles speak for itself? Or do companies still want to see engineers spending their spare time doing unpaid coding? By mid-career, many people have families to support, that they also would like t…

> By mid-career, many people have families to support, that they also would like to spend time with in their down time. I have never hired anyone, but anecdotally from a team lead dev who has hired a couple dozen people, that is the exact kind of thing they want to avoid. If someone was a "star" working 90 hours a week in the past but now wants to work 40, they stop being the kind of "star" some companies want.

Stars work 90 hours a week? Are they being paid hourly? Would you pay them hourly if they requested it and would you still think they were stars if you were?

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#115

Post by GoToRO »

georgeburdell wrote: post #29

I look at that resume and I wonder if it didn't hurt more than it helped; it's form over function, and a bit corny. The fact that he got multiple offers in two months shows how strong the software job market is. I'm several years younger, but a staff-level hardware engineer at a second tier company (top tier being FAANG). I've had an incredibly difficult time jumping companies --- 2 years and counting. Despite being…

I had a recruiter specifically ask me to use a similar style CV with very long descriptions. I guess when companies brag about having non-technical managers (and other gate-keepers) this is the key to getting the job. I did get an offer, only to later be canceled due to too many contractors in the company (above legal limit).

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#116

Post by quxbar »

seer wrote: post #84
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your resume is a "yes" at first read, your GitHub projects won't matter. Likewise, if your resume experience is a "no", they're not going to visit GitHub to change their minds. Where it starts to matter is if your resume is a "maybe" on first read. If they're not quite sure if your experience is what they're looking for, they might make an effort to probe around your GitHub profile for extra information. Having ev…

A lot of the time you’re not reviewed in isolation. There is a stack of resumes and 5 of them are a yes, but there’s a budget for 2. Or you have roughly the same experience but demand a bit more money. In all of those cases having a real provable thing they can anchor their decision on is a big win. Anything in a resume can be suspect. Every time you describe something awesome you did at a previous job, there is “ano…

This is not really my experience, having worked at a number of companies. Everyone's desperate to hire as many good engineers as they can find, there's rarely a week when two qualified candidates walk in the door. Maybe other job markets are worse, but IMO the real curse is that most resumes get only a cursory glance for buzzwords before a call is made.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#117

Post by GoToRO »

lynchdt wrote: post #10

Some perhaps unsolicited advice from a hiring manager in a company very similar to the great ones in which this writer was unsuccessful. - Rare programmers won’t identify themselves as such. - Most great companies hire for humility as a trait.

I really hope is humbleness and not humility. But yes, managers want people they can control.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#118

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

lihaciudaniel wrote: post #107
ivalm wrote: post #99

I am curious what counts for “mid career”, he started coding ~6 years ago. Presumably he is in his 20s. Here him talking about leaving philosophy: https://www.philosophicalhacker.com/2014/04/22/why-im-glad-m... Edit: LinkedIn ~agrees with this estimate

>For the past 5 years, I hoped I was going to be a philosophy professor Assuming he goes to university or somewhere. Because most people find it boring he should have chosen history, latin, or simply other humanities subjects. How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways???

> How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways???

when you're the type of person who likes to question everything and who wants to build things to make the world a "better place", then switching to humanities with a tech foundation is a good option. It can be very dangerous though. One is at risk of undoing all the previous conditioning (which costed a lot of time and money) and bring oneself to realize that it takes more than just "an idea for an app", or VC funding to actually contribute to society in a lasting and non-fraudulent way. It also might anger your colleagues who will never admit that they've been conned, drank too much of the corporate/academic kool-aid, and besides nobody likes people swimming against the stream especially when the reward isn't monetary and has even got high potential of working against you in the short term financially. How dare those damn fools who want to be better engineers and also better humans by widening their world-view!

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#119

Post by Tomis02 »

nnq wrote: post #94
georgeburdell wrote: post #29

I look at that resume and I wonder if it didn't hurt more than it helped; it's form over function, and a bit corny. The fact that he got multiple offers in two months shows how strong the software job market is. I'm several years younger, but a staff-level hardware engineer at a second tier company (top tier being FAANG). I've had an incredibly difficult time jumping companies --- 2 years and counting. Despite being…

> hardware engineer Software's different because you can hire-fast & fire-fast. Unless you have broken processes and incompetent people surrounding the new hire, you can easily determine if they're good enough. Hack, it's even worth it to hire 2 devs for everyone you need and fire the worst performing one in a few months (flip a coin if they're pretty equal and can't afford them both). Easier to get fired, easier to…

> it's even worth it to hire 2 devs for everyone you need and fire the worst performing one in a few months (flip a coin if they're pretty equal and can't afford them both).

You're a bit of a piece of shit, aren't you? Playing with people's lives like you're a god.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#120

Post by nikanj »

georgeburdell wrote: post #29

I look at that resume and I wonder if it didn't hurt more than it helped; it's form over function, and a bit corny. The fact that he got multiple offers in two months shows how strong the software job market is. I'm several years younger, but a staff-level hardware engineer at a second tier company (top tier being FAANG). I've had an incredibly difficult time jumping companies --- 2 years and counting. Despite being…

The market is very strong, but at the same time every single company insists on the hazing and crazy algorithm grilling. We should start accepting that not every company is FAANG, not every company is solving FAANG hard problems, and not every programmer belongs to the 0.001% best
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