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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

#131

Post by michaelt »

nnoitra wrote: post #93
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…

Could it be that you are overqualified? How was your PhD experience, do you think it has helped your career considering the opportunity cost?

For most programming jobs, the salary for "no industry experience, PhD" is lower than the salary for "4 years industry experience, college degree"

So it's not a big moneymaker. But it's certainly not the biggest financial hit you can take in life; having children will cost you a lot more and loads of people do that.

If you look at lifetime salary surveys, you'll find people with doctoral degrees earn more - and some people will say even if a PhD doesn't boost your salary on the day of graduation, your salary will rise faster and higher than your peers. But that could easily be confounded by the fact you've got to have good grades, or ambition towards fancy titles, in order to get a PhD.

There are exceptions, of course; if you want to become a professional academic, if you target a job at a company's research division and choose your research accordingly, or if moves you into a new immigration status. There's no doubt the likes of Chris Urmson and Anthony Levandowski made a lot of money on the back of their PhDs.

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

#132

Post by rikroots »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #57
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…

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…

> Realistically, most companies are never going to check your GitHub profile in the first place

This is, in my personal experience, a sad truth.

I've been seriously looking for work for the past 6 months (thank you, Covid-19, for your disruption) and I'm surprised by the number of times I've started a phone interview with questions like: "tell me about your skills" ... has the interviewer not looked at my CV with its link to GitHub and various live projects I've done?

Yes I know engineers and interviewers are busy people with real jobs and deadlines and stuff. But I've been on that side of the table too. I've conducted plenty of interviews, online and face-to-face. Not researching the candidate before you talk to them or meet them ... that's just discourteous (in my view). Even 15 mins spent checking out the links they've supplied can give the interviewer a feel for the candidate's potential strengths and weaknesses and help the interviewer personalise the "standard" questions to better fit the candidates experiences.

Interviewing is an unpleasant task for everyone. Making the experience even a little less unpleasant can help everyone make better hiring choices at the end of the day.

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

#133

Post by r0b05 »

nikanj wrote: post #122
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

Ageism in tech is well-established and widely reported. If you're too old for the game by the time you reach 40, your mid-career does indeed fall somewhere in your late 20s/early 30s.

Indeed. One needs to have an exit strategy for after 40s.

In this case, early 30s would be mid career.

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

#134

Post by lihaciudaniel »

eru wrote: post #124
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

Making lots of money is how society tells you what contributions it realy values. A big part of the rest is empty talk. It's easy to say that we value eg teachers or nurses or janitors. Doesn't make us pay them more.

[flagged]

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

#135

Post by lihaciudaniel »

watwut wrote: post #110
lihaciudaniel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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??? Why would that be impossible or shocking? Most people are able to learn multiple different things and have interest in multiple different things. Universities typically allow you to take courses from different topics too.

>Universities typically allow you to take courses from different topics too.

But in America I don't think you can do that, some families don't have the privilege to spend so much money on somebody to get a bachelor in philosophy and then have no jobs afterwards.

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

#136

Post by b3kart »

nikanj wrote: post #122
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

Ageism in tech is well-established and widely reported. If you're too old for the game by the time you reach 40, your mid-career does indeed fall somewhere in your late 20s/early 30s.

“Well-established and widely reported”: is it actually? Yes, I’ve also seen the anecdotes on HN, but I am conscious of the survivorship bias, never mind HNs overall bias towards the US/Bay Area. You might never hear from developers in their 40s and 50s who have found a job easily and don’t bother participating in such discussions. Any statistics available on age and time in current role for SDEs, preferably spread geographically?

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

#137

Post by bradleyjg »

ido wrote: post #121
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

I was also curious, as they didn't mention their age. As the age of retirement is currently ~67 (depends on the country but unlikely to go down in the future) and we assume you start your career after college in your early 20s - let's say 22 - you get ~45 years of work. Let's say the above is closer to a maximum than an average & "generously" go with a round 40 years of work; Then mid-career would be in your 40s.

A baseball player might well do something after the majors—coaching, announcing, hawking life insurance—but it’s still reasonable to talk about a “mid-career shortstop” six years in.

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

#138

Post by rubidium »

eru wrote: post #124
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

Making lots of money is how society tells you what contributions it realy values. A big part of the rest is empty talk. It's easy to say that we value eg teachers or nurses or janitors. Doesn't make us pay them more.

No. It’s how the economy tells you what is valuable. Economy != society. In fact (in the US) we have a terrible economic system right now for our society, but it seems to be better than anything else that’s been tried for large modern nation states.

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

#139

Post by goatinaboat »

rikroots wrote: post #132
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…

> Realistically, most companies are never going to check your GitHub profile in the first place This is, in my personal experience, a sad truth. I've been seriously looking for work for the past 6 months (thank you, Covid-19, for your disruption) and I'm surprised by the number of times I've started a phone interview with questions like: "tell me about your skills" ... has the interviewer not looked at my CV with its…

has the interviewer not looked at my CV with its link to GitHub and various live projects I've done?

No one ever looks at anyone’s Github, that’s the dirty little secret of hiring. A decade ago having a Github account was a weak-to-medium strength signal. Nowadays pretty much everyone has one and most are filled with junk (I’m sure yours isn’t but no one has the time to pore over it). You would be much better off saying “I contributed features X and Y to well-known Open Source product Z” where Z is something from the job spec.

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

#140

Post by throwawayfaang »

nscalf wrote: post #78
cletus wrote: post #66

So I'd say anyone looking for engineering work should aim to have at least one (and just one is fine) of the following: 1. A good (and well-known) school. MIT, Stanford, CMU, UW, Waterloo, you get the picture. 2. A good (and well-known) employer. FAANGs in particular. Ideally as an FTE but internships are good signals here too. 3. To be known for something you've done. Well-used open source project, well-known blog,…

I want to add another option: 4) Have a wide range of items on your resume. I have found that having experience as an engineer in Fortune 500 companies, startups, working at the only dev, level 3 support, building dev ops, joining a big team, owning back end services, reworking a database, etc. has given me credibility for most positions. Everyone knows you won’t immediately fit in perfectly to any role, but if you h…

I think you should not do that. Whenever I see a CV from a candidate in his/her twenties listing like 30 different technologies that each take years to master (unless you're really a programming prodigy but even then it's unlikely) I immediately think the candidate is doing "keyword spamming", and that's a strong negative signal. As a candidate such a strategy can quickly backfire as well, because your interviewer might pick one of the technologies you boldly listed on your CV and ask you really detailed questions about it, which you might not be able to answer because you might only have used it in a short side project and don't know it in depth. That will almost always ruin your chances of getting an offer. I recommend to only list languages and technologies you really know well. You can still list others that you dabbled with but make it obvious that you e.g. only explored these in your spare time or are curious to learn more about them, this will be a positive signal and won't come over as keyword spamming.

Same thing if a candidate has too many short tenures on his/her CV. If I get a candidate that has five or more short (<12 months) stints at different companies I will not invite him/her (or at least ask for clarification in the phone screen) because it hints at a general problem. There are surprisingly many candidates that call themselves programmers but really can't program at all (or only at a very basic level), still they often manage to land positions as programmers, which they eventually get fired from (or leave) when it becomes clear they can't do the job (and some companies take a long time to come to this conclusion). A long string of short tenures is one indication of such a person, so be wary of putting too many short tenure work experiences on your resume, except if you're a freelancer of course.

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