> “dark matter” developersI like that. I'm probably one.
A few years ago, my company finally wound up my team, and brought all their development over to The Old Country (I am in the US, and it was a Japanese company). The jury's out, on whether or not it was a good idea for that company.
For me, I had plenty of investments and savings, that I didn't need to work, if I didn't want to, but I wanted to work. I love working on teams; the more eclectic, the better. I have a fairly unusual confluence of skills, experience and character that I know is quite valuable, and quite rare. I was a manager for a long time ("discussion" interviews were the way I worked). That means that I’m quite aware of the value of my skills. I’m not God’s gift to SWE, but I’m no slouch.
I also have a very big portfolio, to prove what I say. I'm not blowing up my CV with padding and BS. In fact, I had to remove a great deal of stuff, in order to keep it to a couple of pages.
I know that not everyone has a portfolio like mine, but it's what I have. It's dozens and dozens of completed, ship-ready, ultra-high-quality projects that can easily be examined, installed, built, run, and, in some cases, submitted to the App Store. There’s at least a decade of commit history, across these codebases, and a ton of documentation. Anyone can look at it. I make it very easy to find.
Couple that with many, many blog postings, training modules, essays, tutorials, etc., and you have a pretty damn good idea of who I am, what drives me, and what I can bring to the table.
You really can't get more solid than that.
In my experience, this was completely ignored, when I was searching for work. I understand the excuses that many managers use for this, and, in some cases, I can't argue against them, but, in other cases, they really missed the boat. I could have actually made a significant difference to their bottom line; especially a couple of smaller companies.
In the end, I just gave up looking, and went to work on my own. I found some folks doing nonprofit work, that looked like they could use some help, and I've been working with them, for free. I'm also making that "significant difference" that I mentioned earlier.
I have absolutely no intention of looking for work in the corporate rat race anymore. I'm quite disappointed in the zeitgeist of the modern software development industry, and don't want to darken my spirit.
It took me a few years to realize just how bad it was for me, and how much better it is, now. It would be nice to have the extra money that a continued paid career would give, but I've become used to feeling good about my work, and I work a lot.
It's like the scales fell from my eyes.