Times are great for programmers now. How does it end? • Hacker News Board

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#561

Post by LAC-Tech » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

lowercased wrote: post #373

LAC-Tech wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an independent contractor for the past two years, It hasn't been much of a grind finding and retaining customers. You have to put some work in, sure, but I don't feel it's particularly onerous. Never had to take someone out to dinner or cold call. People need software development skills and generally like it when you find them. As for never being paid on time - I think the most late it's ever been has been 2 weeks…

> As an independent contractor for the past two years, It hasn't been much of a grind finding and retaining customers....I think the most late it's ever been has been 2 weeks. When it's you who's gettind paid a bit late... it's manageable. When those late payments affect people you have to pay... it's a whole different game. I've been on both sides of this and it's great when it works, and bad when it doesn't. Buildi…

Right. I mean I literally want to be co-owners of a business with one other person. Not hire a bunch of subordinates. A literal business partnership.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#562

Post by jd115 » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

sage76 wrote: post #390

jd115 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have NO university degree and ZERO affiliation with anything remotely FAANG (I'm based in Europe, where relatively few people work for FAANG). There are no globally recognisable names on my CV. I am still the highest paid person I personally know - by a rather high margin, because of my experience as a software engineer. Since I dropped out of university almost 20 years ago, I have been consulting and contracting,…

Good for you. I have experience with all 3 of those technologies and it's nearly impossible to even get an interview.

This is honestly baffling to me, I can't imagine how this can be. I get multiple emails each week from recruiters looking for that exact skill-set, and this is AFTER I've tried extra hard to unsubscribe from all such emails.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#563

Post by redleader9345 » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #203

LAC-Tech wrote: post #176

I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…

> We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. I highly disagree with this. For some reason, many devs seem to think they are somehow better than everyone else, that they are the most important part of any team, that no on besides them can have any insight on timelines, or budget, on which features are or aren't important. News flash - all of the above is…

Sometimes it's a matter of hygiene and humane working conditions. You might be surprised at the amount of codebases that are just the equivalent of working in filth.

If your workspace has shit smeared on the walls, you don't ask if you can clean it up. You just do it.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#564

Post by blindmute » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

aor215 wrote: post #541

blindmute wrote: post #521

As far as I'm concerned, the ride stops when the masses realize how easy the profession actually is. You can take any office worker and train them to an entry level competency in 3-5 months, when they will get a job for at least $75k. They are then in a new career path and will soon make 100k. I find it impossible to convince non devs that being a developer is easy. They can't fathom why we get paid so much if it's e…

I used to think the same. I too find my job to be easy and sometimes feel like we have this secret in the software industry that our work really isn't all that difficult these days, with so many hard problems having already been solved. I say this as a senior SDE in big tech. But, after watching a close friend, who is brilliant—she had gone to a top 30 college undergrad and had top SAT scores—go to a coding bootcamp…

I just find it hard to believe that the typical office worker likes their job enough to do that, but would find software development at ~double their salary not worth it. People don't want to spend their days in Excel either, but millions do.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#565

Post by pjungwir » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #232

WJW wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting an agency is the easiest part. Then after that comes the never ending grind to find and retain customers, who will never pay on time, refuse to budget time for frivolities like "testing" and "refactoring" and who will mercilessly shop out the work to as many of your competitors as they can find. Developer agencies have existed for decades and the reason that not everybody is rushing to work for them is becau…

As an independent contractor for the past two years, It hasn't been much of a grind finding and retaining customers. You have to put some work in, sure, but I don't feel it's particularly onerous. Never had to take someone out to dinner or cold call. People need software development skills and generally like it when you find them. As for never being paid on time - I think the most late it's ever been has been 2 weeks…

I'm also an independent contractor trying to find one or two trustworthy partners to go to the next step. I haven't found sales, collections, etc. to be so onerous. In fact usually I'm turning away work.

A few years back I tried forming an LLC with a couple friends, but they both have full-time jobs and they keep getting promoted, so it's never gone anywhere, and we're talking about winding it down. I'd love to try again with someone who is already independent and is ready to try something bigger.

I haven't read Developer Hegemony, but another great book about the dynamics of such a partnership is Managing the Professional Service Firm by David Maister. It's pretty dense, but it's full of great ideas.

I went into freelancing in part to avoid becoming a manager, and I think with the right kind of partnership you could still practice your craft while still helping to lead a small team of people---or maybe even just mostly collaborating with other partners. The Maister book has helpful things to say here about whether your firm focuses on work that is repeatable & leveragable (e.g. making Wordpress sites) vs unique, challenging, and done mostly by partners (which sounds more fun to me).

I'm in Portland, Oregon, if anyone is interested in talking about something like that. :-)

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#566

Post by sage76 » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 8:08 PM UTC

jd115 wrote: post #562

sage76 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. I have experience with all 3 of those technologies and it's nearly impossible to even get an interview.

This is honestly baffling to me, I can't imagine how this can be. I get multiple emails each week from recruiters looking for that exact skill-set, and this is AFTER I've tried extra hard to unsubscribe from all such emails.

My final straw was when I was asked to code this problem in 20 mins :

https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-nodes-in-k-group/

Maybe I'm just too stupid.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#567

Post by redleader9345 » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 8:09 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #357

bob1029 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key point for me is that once you control for all common human flaws, the developer is still far better suited to make an executive decision regarding a technology concern than anyone else on the team. I recently made the mistake of deferring to the anxieties and fears of non-developers for so long that I almost forgot how we got to where we are today or what my true capabilities are. You know exactly wha…

> I recently made the mistake of deferring to the anxieties and fears of non-developers for so long that I almost forgot how we got to where we are today or what my true capabilities are. Ouch, dude, you didn't have to stab me in the heart. But yeah, 100% same. I am just now, at the age of almost 42, starting to finally crawl out of that. I am ashamed that it took me most of my life and career but oh well. > I think…

Pushing back, standing up for yourself, not being a doormat. All this is key to being treated with respect. The problem is that today, we've got a perfect storm. Developers do tend to be more naturally non-confrontational. Combine this with an abundance of opportunities, and developers will just leave rather than confront and push back.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#568

Post by Nevermark » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #445

Dave3of5 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For non-tech people the code should be a black box they shouldn't know the internal details. In terms of refactoring there is no way to give a Cost Benefit analysis as that's too subjective. This should be a maintenance cost that's factored into the project at a high level. So you would say there a X days per year (normally about 20%) of the working days of the year spent on maintenance. Company I'm at has this and i…

> For non-tech people the code should be a black box they shouldn't know the internal details. Ideally, yes, though in practice this usually breaks in various ways, especially when problems occur. E.g. the President of a country probably doesn't need to be a firefighter, but if there's suddenly a massive fire, I assume he'd need to be briefed in far more detail to help call shots around the type of response. > In ter…

I think that is true when the goal is to get something well understood out quickly.

In other cases, it is more important to get things right and continual refactoring is the fastest way to find an acceptable architecture to a novel problem.

In either approach, when speed is of essence, a limited scope helps avoid either producing insurmountable technical debt, or an unterminating research rabbit hole, respectively.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#569

Post by starwind » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 8:40 PM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #176

I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…

This comment kicked off one of the most interesting internet threads I've read in my life

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#570

Post by Tagbert » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #176

I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…

As a non-programmer who has sometimes joined standups as a product owner this seems like the developers are not standing up for their viewpoints in the process. The team’s I have worked on, we have an agreement that some percentage of the time should be devoted to refactoring and similar technical tasks. there may be a specific designation or it may be just a rough approximation but we respect each other enough to have a conversation about it and come to an agreement.

My role is to ensure that the overall project and deliverable is on track. I will ask questions to clarify statements made in standup. I expect questions coming to me about requirements, intent, and timing. If there are problems with external teams, I will do my best to work out that blocker. I don’t dictate how the devs do their work as long as they are able to deliver the features that were agreed on. If that is not going to happen, we can have a discussion about why and what adjustment needs to be made.

If more refactoring needs to be done, we can have that conversation. Talk to me about the cost and benefits of the refactoring and the impact on deliverables. It may be worthwhile accepting a delay in deliverables now. It may also be that those particular deliverables are important enough that the refactoring may need to be deferred even if the ultimate cost is higher. Those kinds of trade-offs cannot be done only by one part of the team but need to be weighed by the whole team.

This kind of open and respectful discussion is part of a well functioning team. If you are not getting that then raise this as a problem in retrospectives because it needs to be addressed.