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Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#61

Post by montoro »

lmohseni wrote: post #57
montoro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really awesome - but I feel like it's also an extreme that few are willing to take. One thing which is an argument for software development is that the relatively good salary should enable you to save up and take a sabbatical every 4-5 years. To me, that is absolutely worth doing this job, even if I don't always like it (also, there's also almost nothing I would be qualified to do, at the moment, to be fair).

For sure, and it’s definitely something I never would have planned or expected for myself. It was also partly influenced by COVID, and further compounded by pretty rough break up. But the funny thing is, I really feel more comfortable and confident than when I was “succeeding”. I used to feel so guilty about a one line code fix taking weeks to deploy, or I used to feel so guilty and terrible for not paying attention…

I never had anything to do with farming but I can imagine its appeal. Living from the fat of the land and not caring about planning and preplanning and retrospectives and all that.

Best of luck!

Will look up Gabe Brown & Chris Trump.

About the three nonlinearities, I'm afraid I'm missing some context - never read up about chaos theory...

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#62

Post by LostTrackHowM »

II2II wrote: post #46
jki275 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 44 year old software engineer. I've done other things before, but I've gotten an offer every place I've interviewed. This simply isn't true. It might be true in silicon valley or some other hipster magnets, but there's definitely a market for those of us who have been around for decades and been solving problems for decades.

As an outsider to the industry, I have always wondered what the situation is like in smaller companies or for starting your own business to serve local clients. Part of the reason why I ask is that most of the places that I have worked for respect experience more than youth, and couldn't care less if the firms that they were contracting work out to employed experienced developers in their 20's or their 50's.

As an outsider to the industry, I have always wondered what the situation is like in smaller companies or for starting your own business to serve local clients.

Small companies, typically startups, are diverse. Some like hiring diamonds in the rough, which can include old developers. Other are obsessed with youth.

Starting your own business or consulting are standard and popular options for old developers.

As an industry insider, people complain as loudly as people from any industry. But just look at the actual unemployment and pay rates per industry. Few other industries are better.

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#63

Post by lutusp »

> I'll preface this by saying this field has never been my passion, just a profession I like.

You need to realize you're competing with people for whom programming really is a passion.

Also, perhaps more important, ask yourself if, at any particular time, the programming job market is a seller's or a buyer's market. If it's a seller's market (meaning favoring the programmers), after a brief interview employers will take you on as an intern for a week and see if you can produce results. If it's a buyer's market, the employer will ask hypothetical questions having little to do with actual programming, in a process that may seem to be intentional discouragement. From your description, your interview fell into the latter category.

The intern approach addresses a well-known problem in the field -- interviews don't efficiently identify productive programmers, they identify whiz kids. This is why the intern arrangement has become more popular over the years.

But the bottom line: if find yourself asking whether you really want to be a programmer, chances are, you don't.

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#64

Post by brianwawok »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #48
codetrotter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also say what you think would be the number of followers (millions+), what would be the time needed for a write you a database (~millisecond each) and why that won't match 3 seconds, so you know how much time you have per follower. While we are on the topic I am really curious to know how they solve it actually.

I don't work at twitter, but one thing you can know for sure is that the tweet needs to be distributed to multiple machines to meet this performance requirement. A single machine probably could probably send three million trivial messages in three seconds, but if you mix in any business logic it's not gonna happen. What I'd do is have a shared highfanout queue. Once you have more than say 10k followers your tweets go…

Right. Seems very doable to verbally sketch it if you have ever seen something like a fan out.

If you only worked in single Wordpress servers, I could see it a big leap.

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#65

Post by mesaframe »

rtlfe wrote: post #23

Most interviews unfortunately have little to do with the actual work and require significant practice to do well. > One question I was asked was "How do you make sure that a celebrity's tweet reaches all of her followers in less than 3 seconds?". I had no idea, I have never handled that kinda scale. If you're technically competent overall, you should be able to learn enough to make your way through this from a few ho…

The biggest hurdle for me to get the resume selected. How do people do that!?

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#66

Post by brianwawok »

jki275 wrote: post #16
diego_moita wrote: post #12

You'll have to, soon or late. Sooner or later you'll start facing ageism. It is rampant. The interviewers will look younger, the interviews scarcer, the technology stack will move to a new shiny thing that is a rehash of ideas of previous fads of old, people will start using arguments like "fitting into the culture",... I read somewhere a long ago that software developers have an half-life of 6 years. If you're long…

I'm a 44 year old software engineer. I've done other things before, but I've gotten an offer every place I've interviewed. This simply isn't true. It might be true in silicon valley or some other hipster magnets, but there's definitely a market for those of us who have been around for decades and been solving problems for decades.

Do you stay current?

I see resumes for similar aged people who know cold fusion and Delphi, and those that know JavaScript and Elixer.

I suspect interviews go very differently for the two groups.

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#67

Post by dehrmann »

codetrotter wrote: post #31
viraptor wrote: post #24

I'd like to give you a different view on the interview / question you mentioned. While it's certainly possible the interviewers are running the process badly (many are), pretend they have good intentions and answer to that. The tweet question is basically: can you think about performance. Let's say you don't know anything about queues or distributed systems. You can say you never worked at that scale. You can also sa…

> You can also say what you think would be the number of followers (millions+), what would be the time needed for a write you a database (~millisecond each) and why that won't match 3 seconds, so you know how much time you have per follower. While we are on the topic I am really curious to know how they solve it actually.

One trick to problems like this is to solve it differently for celebrities, head queries, etc., than for less commonly accessed data. Essentially have two different systems and combine the data because designing a single system that meets both scale requirements is harder.

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#68

Post by dehrmann »

LostTrackHowM wrote: post #19

With over 20 years experience in the industry, and some products I have worked on visible in SuperBowl advertisements, I can honestly say during interviews I can count to potato. Most recently during a live coding challenge I forgot to you, you know, occasionally run and test the code I was working on, and had one hour to complete. I can also anecdotally report code challenges seems to have become a lot more common i…

> I can also anecdotally report code challenges seems to have become a lot more common in interviews recently.

At least these are halfway representative of the job. It's a lot better than being told you're two inches tall, in a blender, and the blender's going to turn on in five seconds, what do you do.

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#69

Post by flashgordon »

[these are my opinions and not those of any of my current or past employers].

I feel for ya. And I think while passion for software is really great to have, given how our interviews are structured it won't necessarily help you clear them. Our interviews are now all about process. There is such a huge supply of entry level talent (crazy compensation and low barrier to entry) that companies are looking for a standardized way of measuring candidates. This means preparing for interviews will have nothing to do with your role (unless you are widely regarded as a specialist/expert in your field). The good news is since this is standardized it can be hacked by a little trick called preparation. I can assure almost every question in a tech interview can either be found leetcode or in the system design primer. All you need is a month of preparation (or make monthly interviews a hobby like going to the gym so you stay sharp). It is all about mastery and mastery needs consistent practise.

Instead of thinking you cannot do it, I'd encourage you think in a different way. What is keeping you in this field (money? Friends? Domain?) Is it enticing enough for you to put in the effort to stay with the pack for the rewards?

Re: Ask HN: Should I quit the field of software development?

#70

Post by timtimtim123 »

sage76 wrote: post #54
rtlfe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't care to look much deeper unless I'm actually working at Twitter, and it seems that's my problem. If you want to get a job, you probably just need to suck it up and spend some time doing things you don't want to do.

Spoken like someone sitting in the ivory tower of a FAANG. > some time Perhaps it was my fault in not explaining the amount of effort I did put in, but if the implication is i need to learn the intricacies of the architectures of every platform out there, then truly this is not the industry for me.

Awesome. Less competition out there :)
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