301–310 of 731 posts
The author has been working as a developer for 15 years, and claims very strong technical skills. Why are they learning/re-learning Python, C++, SQL, C#, college math? Nobody will be fooled by that; at 15 YoE they will be evaluated on what they have done over a career, not over the last month. > it's all about how much time you can spend on Leetcode. The author is playing a game built for new grads. Here's a secret,…
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That's nonsense. I've got 20 YoE, an elite college degree, tons of experience in Python and C++, have single-handedly put together mission critical software systems, and I can't get my foot in the door outside my small area of expertise. The teams I've worked on are tiny, so I have no career network to draw from. I'm missing machine learning and cloud experience, and my resume gets no hits because of it. Age 44, and…
> my resume gets no hits > Maybe someone will notice me there. I'm not sure if expecting them to come to you is a winning strategy. But you could get someone to review your CV to see if the presentation of it can be improved ? I also have more than 20 years of experience, and if anyone asks me more than a fleeting question on what I did in college, that would be a massive red flag for me. I feel that even if I'm new…
Yes, if you have spare time.
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In my experience "going above and beyond" tends to get you more work and responsibility for roughly the same pay. I did get the occasional 5% annual raise instead of the standard 2-3% that most of my coworkers received. Even then the raises were usually more dependent on how well the company performed vs how well I performed.
I've noticed this a few times in my career and have had to start slowing myself down at times. If I deliver in a day instead of the expected two for example, I don't get that second day off, I get twice as much work and get paid the same for it. The harder I work, the less I make. If they want me to bust my ass and sacrifice sleep I need to be given hazard pay.
I try to target obscure projects that I already know how to do, where there's an assumption that nobody really knows how to do it because it's obscure. Complexity and obscurity are great cover. Picking up legacy projects on old tech is a good way to do this. "Oh no, PHP sucks! Nobody's touched this code in years! Not to worry, give me a couple of days I'm sure I'll figure it out." Now my estimate is 3x longer than it would be if I was working in the areas under normal development.
I've also got my notifications pretty dialed-in so I never appear absent when someone needs me. I prevent slack from marking me idle. I turn my notifications to a more aggressive setting when I want to take a nap.
Nobody knows how long it takes to get a piece of code working, not even other programmers, so who cares if it takes a week instead of a day. Sometimes I keep a local branch that's represents my actual work and a second branch for pushing to the team. If I get in "flow" and want to get something done in a block of many hours, I can drip-feed the commits over a couple of days instead of dropping a PR at 2am and having everyone think I'm free to work on something else tomorrow. With a little shell scripting, I can make commits and push on a timer too, which is sometimes useful if I need to "work late" because everyone is stressed.
When something blows up in prod, I put in the extra hours with a good attitude. That helps create the perception that I'm the go-to person for things and a team player, so it's not surprising to anyone if I'm running a little late on a deliverable because I had to drop everything and help with something important (another way to add more buffer). I also try to pair sometimes, especially with new coworkers, so that they can see me working in short bursts. Pairing serves as a psychological anchor that I must work that way all the time. After all, I don't want people thinking I'm lazy.
Sometimes mistakes happen and I do get stuck working an 8 hour day, but those mistakes would have been 16 hour days if I wasn't actively avoiding doing as much work as possible.
As much as I can stomach it, I try to use the extra time to socialize with coworkers to help raise my visibility and build allies. That's the smart thing to do. In reality, I mostly play video games, do housework, and anxiously wait until work is "over" for the day so I can detach from my notifications.
Has tech turned me into a sociopath? Maybe. Do I feel like a prisoner in my own home? Certainly. But if I don't use this strategy, I'll constantly be over-committed, burned out, salty, and missing social connections with coworkers that are more valuable than the actual work.
I can't wait until I have enough money to be financially independent and never have to do this nonsense again.
His technical skills were not already "very strong" if briefly revisting college mathematics made them "considerably stronger", lol
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Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now. Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or…
I need to create several projects or companies to reverse these trends. Your insight is appreciated.
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It really really sucks that it’s almost 2021 and we still have to try to sneak in a little SQL injection just to see if they know about it... Ffs is that never going to go away?
the only way it could possibly go away for good is database libraries that don’t support dynamic SQL. But you almost always need the flexibility at some point, and SQL is so powerful that taking it off the table is hard to justify.
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I’m spending some time in Constantinople right now, if anyone wants to spend some time lamenting the fall of the Western Roman Empire together. That is, after the weekend plague curfew. Email transitively in profile.
How is the plague of Justinian treating you so far?
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10 years of experience here Early this year I got good at these problems and the ones I would actually encounter, above the average (based on time to solve, efficiency), as well as the system design interviews and I honestly think the behavioral interviews too, but decision makers just do not want to pay me over $180k. Whether thats salary at a Series B, C or midsize company or big tech companies whose total comp wou…
You created the digital currencies and sold them? So you came up with your own coin then? When was this and how did you convince people to buy it, unless you had an active project for it (or you were intentionally fleecing them)? You could possibly get away with that a few years ago when people were throwing a bunch of money away on vaporware ICOs, but it's getting cracked down on more now.
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I've noticed this a few times in my career and have had to start slowing myself down at times. If I deliver in a day instead of the expected two for example, I don't get that second day off, I get twice as much work and get paid the same for it. The harder I work, the less I make. If they want me to bust my ass and sacrifice sleep I need to be given hazard pay.
You're right, and as a result I try to work no more than 4 hours a day, preferably less. I take every possible opportunity to extend timelines, create buffer, and reduce scope. I'm highly incentivized to farm as much time as possible, so that's what I do. I try to target obscure projects that I already know how to do, where there's an assumption that nobody really knows how to do it because it's obscure. Complexity a…
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Why would any company want me to write an array sort instead of calling the .sort() method on the standard array class? Is that really the sort of thing they want their devs to code and debug and maintain by hand?
If you can't do a sort, how will be be able to do more high level complex things?