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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

#201

Post by lynchdt »

mettamage wrote: post #87
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 want to ask a silly question. I know there are no such things as silly questions according to some people. In any case: What happens if great companies do not hire for humility as a trait? Is it truly as simple as: too many unkind people get into the company? Or could one be more cynical and say: it's easier to not have humble people negotiate tough salaries? Or is it something completely different? I honestly don'…

Maybe I was a little terse in my response. Humility often comes hand in hand with a growth mindset and a real eagerness to learn. Not hiring for that limits the long term upside of the hire ie you get what you get right now.

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

#202

Post by jakemal »

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.

I suspect they are conflating mid-career with mid-level engineer. The latter would generally be around 6 years of experience.

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

#203

Post by lynchdt »

wolco wrote: post #83
soneca wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it, thanks. Still, I am reading it with more generous eyes I think. It seemed to be used to contextualize their communication skills. Not as ”I am better than most” , more like ”I have this unique trait that you might value” . But I can see how it could be read

Plus he backs it up with speaking. It's narrow and credible enough that it works. It doesn't work with a thin resume.

This is the crux of it. Even to a well calibrated tech recruiter, the resume reads thin on substance.

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

#204

Post by stevehawk »

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #147

It's alarming that there's an idea among a people -- possibly bay area -- that mid-career is six years of experience. You are your own worst enemy with that kind of belief. People reinvent themselves and their careers many times over a lifetime. It's hard to return to certain types of technical work but never impossible, especially for those who are sufficiently motivated. You will reach the limit of a pay scale, but…

I feel like the bigger problem is that SV, or at least SF, is proving itself to declare programmers "over the hill" by 35. After all, if you're older than that then you're probably not willing to sacrifice 16-20 hour days to whatever CEO thinks he or she is sitting on the next unicorn.

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

#205

Post by ghaff »

sails wrote: post #170
say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #147

It's alarming that there's an idea among a people -- possibly bay area -- that mid-career is six years of experience. You are your own worst enemy with that kind of belief. People reinvent themselves and their careers many times over a lifetime. It's hard to return to certain types of technical work but never impossible, especially for those who are sufficiently motivated. You will reach the limit of a pay scale, but…

I like the framing of a career into thirds of 15 years. 20-35: Find and build your skills/industries/networks and start to align that into a career. Don't be afraid to make mistakes to enhance learning. 35-50: Double down on the skills you have in the industry you know, build your personal brand, achieve your career goals. 50-65++: Give back to those earlier in their career, pay it forward, pass the torch etc. With t…

That sort of progression still assumes that a person does stay more or less in the same space throughout their career. I know a lot of people (including myself) who have substantially pivoted in their careers multiple times.

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

#206

Post by ghaff »

jonahbenton wrote: post #199
nickbauman wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we agree this idea of a "personal brand" is both harmful and oxymoronic? You are a person, not a product. You have a reputation. This is like adding fuel to the idea that management should look upon the people who work for them as "resources".

Can't agree, sorry. Hear the critique of the abstraction but there is a reason it exists, and to deny is to deny reality. "Personal brand" is just another way of saying "personality, but online." It is the nature of intelligence itself to distill and compress complex, messy stimulus/data/phenomena into shorthand. One must recognize that this is what people do when interacting with oneself, both f2f and online. This i…

It's one of those terms that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Probably because many of the people who use the term a lot have other annoying characteristics. But, for many, their (online and otherwise) reputation/personality is a real and important thing.

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

#207

Post by mixmastamyk »

bigiain wrote: post #102
wolco wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you hit the nail on the head. The various random things that can be thrown at you is incredible. Add that to different personality requirements. Most want extroverts during the interview process but introverted after hired.

> The various random things that can be thrown at you is incredible. From another perspective, that's a pretty apt description of a whole class of programming jobs. Maybe it's an accidental/unintended test for a thing that really matters...

Real engineering problems are solved over weeks of research, however, not binary pass-fail pop-quiz format.

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

#208

Post by jonahbenton »

ghaff wrote: post #206
jonahbenton wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree, sorry. Hear the critique of the abstraction but there is a reason it exists, and to deny is to deny reality. "Personal brand" is just another way of saying "personality, but online." It is the nature of intelligence itself to distill and compress complex, messy stimulus/data/phenomena into shorthand. One must recognize that this is what people do when interacting with oneself, both f2f and online. This i…

It's one of those terms that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Probably because many of the people who use the term a lot have other annoying characteristics. But, for many, their (online and otherwise) reputation/personality is a real and important thing.

Agree completely, both wrt the grating-ness of the terminology and of its profiteers.

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

#209

Post by ipnon »

bregma wrote: post #187
rikroots wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've done more than a handful of interviews as an engineering manager trying to fill team positions. I can tell you the question is not looking to find out what you've done so much as to find out who you are. When I'm trying to fill a req I will usually get hundreds or thousands of applications, which get winnowed down to a dozen or so by the HR department, or system, or something. All of those applications have resu…

Do you think this confirms the adage that in-person interviews succeed when the interviewer is socially attracted to the candidate, as opposed to when the candidate is merely qualified?

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

#210

Post by mywittyname »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #191
sails wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the framing of a career into thirds of 15 years. 20-35: Find and build your skills/industries/networks and start to align that into a career. Don't be afraid to make mistakes to enhance learning. 35-50: Double down on the skills you have in the industry you know, build your personal brand, achieve your career goals. 50-65++: Give back to those earlier in their career, pay it forward, pass the torch etc. With t…

I think in "our" line of work you tend to see at most 30-some year olds actually talk about the job; I don't know what happens to people in the tech industry beyond that, they seem to have a lot less "presence". Mind you, maybe there's just less of them because access to education and work in tech has improved so much over time?

We hear from 50+ tech people fairly often around here. For the most part, they don't seem to have careers that are all that different from the 30+ crowd. After all, they saw the same technological changes from 44 to 54 as people in their 30s saw from 24 to 34.
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