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A career ending mistake

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Re: A career ending mistake

#321

Post by bobthepanda »

jpetso wrote: post #307
bobthepanda wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React was a pretty big step for frontend-development; people have done good and bad things in React just as they've done in any other framework, but the important thing it (or other frameworks like it) did was establish a better way of tying state to a series of rendered elements that was better than doing CSS-selector-fu and trying to update things that way.

React was doing the right thing for sure, and perhaps in a more principled way than Qt in terms of state propagating downwards and events bubbling up. (CSS still makes layouts unreasonably complex imho.) But also, React is doing things that desktop GUIs had figured out years ago. It did a really good job at distilling the essence into something useful. Angular started the trend of finally moving towards state-driven…

> To label it as a new thing that nobody else had done before though, that's going a bit far... Let's give it lots of credit, but not more than it deserves.

I never claimed it was "first" and I even called out "other frameworks like it." The iPhone was also not the first smartphone.

> CSS still makes layouts unreasonably complex imho.

This we can agree on. Though it could be a lot worse, and some of the newer CSS definitely gets rid of some of the warts. A lot of the bad CSS is mostly the backwards-compatible stuff.

Re: A career ending mistake

#322

Post by haggy102 »

xmprt wrote: post #319
chestnuttrees wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100/mo cable, 5 lattes/week before work at $5/latte… it’s not so far off (unless you decide to litigate the definition of “few” or the average post-tax price of coffee in Nebraska or whatever). It’s illustrative.

Do people still have $100/month cable plans that don't come bundled with Internet? Also, 5 lattes/week is more than a few lattes and $5 per latte is extremely expensive.

Assuming you don't live in a major US city? $5 latte's and $70+ just for Internet (forget cable) is pretty standard now.

Re: A career ending mistake

#323

Post by GekkePrutser »

giantg2 wrote: post #22
GekkePrutser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is totally different. The company I've worked for for the last 20 years has always done the right thing by me. They allowed me to work from my home country for half a year when I needed to be with my family, they paid to move me to yet another country when my team was made redundant so I could do the job I really wanted. And I really love learning obscure tech :) always have. Some companies really are b…

I would like obscure tech if it had a future - like when I thought the company would do the right thing. I do think some companies are better than others, but I don't think any company is really good. They all lie. My company has a reputation for being great and caring. On paper it's true. For over 90% of people, that might be true. But they don't follow their own policies, screwing over a small percentage. So I thin…

Obscure tech is also an opportunity to be one of those rare specialists in a field. A Linux expert still gets rewarded more than a Windows one in a desktop management role, though it's certainly harder to find a job in the first place.

But this is also a personality thing. I prefer being a specialist on something unique over one of many on a big team.

I agree with you that when the obscure tech is simply the wrong one for the scenario, it's bad. If you don't believe in it yourself it's really hard to commit to it. In that case it's probably better to find another position or even another company..

Re: A career ending mistake

#324

Post by neura »

sbarre wrote: post #116
giantg2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"therefore all companies are evil" Not evil, but that they lie and screw over employees. Are there any companies on Glassdoor with 100% positive ratings (with n>100)?

Glassdoor is a terrible metric for measuring companies. Like any rating system it is biased towards people with grievances, as they are motivated to look for an outlet to express that grievance.

Or, on the other hand, I've seen companies offering to enter you into gift card drawings to relate your positive experience with them on glassdoor, etc. :eyeroll: To me, glassdoor and the like are similar to Amazon reviews, you can't trust them, but it sometimes feels like the only way to _possibly_ get the information you're seeking.

Re: A career ending mistake

#325

Post by neura »

giantg2 wrote: post #81
zabzonk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So change careers. I spent the first 6 years of my working life as a medical microbiologist, and was miserable for almost all of it. Then I gradually got into programming, and things looked up. I was still miserable for some bits of it though - such is the nature of things.

There aren't any good career changes that I've found so far. I'm looking though. I think it's easier to get into tech than most other decent paying jobs. So if we reversed the direction of your change, I assume it would be much more difficult to go from programming to medical microbiologist.

This is what I've noticed in (as far as I can remember) all of the comments here that outline their career change. The career change... it's always _to_ programming, but never _away from_ programming. I sometimes feel burned out and like I'm solving the same problems over and over for different people, teams, etc. I mostly enjoy my work and usually the people I work with. I do end up reading comment threads like this one with some frequency and realizing not many people switch from software engineering to altogether different careers. I don't count switching to engineering adjacent roles among the things I'd be willing to switch to because my reasons for leaving are definitely not my lack of passion for technology and learning, but almost always trying to find/build a team I enjoy working with and not having to do the same non-programming things over and over again to improve my environment (people, workflow, pressures, etc).

I really wish there was a way to hop paths that didn't involve making ridiculously less money for many years, while likely having to deal with many of the same problems.

I frequently lament not choosing to go into marine biology, even though I know now that it would have been a far more challenging field and would still have (likely) resulted in far less income. Had I just started on that path, I believe I would not have cared much about the possibility of making more money in another field that I would have been skilled at. The last bit is clearly an assumption as you can't actually go back and do it all over to realize the possible outcome(s), but I can't imagine a life journey were I didn't enjoy programming, even if it wasn't my career focus.

And so here I am, in a place that I mostly still enjoy, dreaming of what could have been, assuring myself that I'm doing the right thing for myself and my family. It would be one thing to completely upend my own life (I still have the belief that I could do it if I were the only person affected), but to completely change the trajectory for my family and possibly the financial stability we enjoy... I guess that leaves me in the category of "overall happy enough" because my family more than makes up for my perceived benefits of getting out of the tech industry, which if not already clear, I love more than hate.

Wow... that's a lot of text and felt more therapeutic than anything to unload that. :) So frequently I'm reading these threads and keeping my thoughts to myself. If nothing else, I hope that maybe some others who believe they're in the same boat take note that they're not alone in this and I have at least 2 close friends who feel very similar to this (though I rarely admit, even to them, that I feel this way about my career).

whew

Re: A career ending mistake

#326

Post by julianozen »

sixdimensional wrote: post #29
tdumitrescu wrote: post #27

Feels like the "senior IC" role described in this article corresponds mainly to today's "3-5 years of experience 'senior' engineer" roles. The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article. It's not the same as management, but it's inevitably more meetings and evang…

The fact that we work in an industry where 3-5 years is considered senior still boggles me sometimes.

My two cents here is that senior doesn’t mean the same thing at every company. But title inflation is a good way to snag great hires away from other places and retain employees

Re: A career ending mistake

#327

Post by [deleted] »

allo37 wrote: post #59
crrndngmstk wrote: post #21

To me, this reveals an uncomfortable truth: - I know I'm not technically skilled enough to make it to the higher levels of IC - I know I lack the people skills & charisma to make it to the higher levels of management I'm aware I can improve in both and I accept that, to some extent, it's a laziness and confidence issue. But to some people it seems to come naturally and it's hard not to assume I'm in the majority that…

I kind of want to work for a FAANG just to meet these wizards who make you feel humbled by their technical prowess (I assume that's where they all are?). Everywhere I've worked for so far, the senior people have usually: a) Been there a long time; b) Are very knowledgeable about that company and its tech, clients, etc. (see a); Of course, they're skilled technically too, but not in a "I could never dream of being tha…

[deleted]

Re: A career ending mistake

#328

Post by mike22 »

ehnto wrote: post #267

> The best time to start a pension is always twenty years ago Does the US not have a mandatory pension program? We have "super annuation" here which is a mandatory payment employers have to make into our pension accounts, minimum being 7% on top of our salary. Very rarely a company will add more to your super.

The US has the social security program, to which both employer and employee make mandatory payroll contributions, but it pays very modestly in retirement. Many employees now contribute to their own self-managed retirement savings/investments. Employer sponsored pensions are disappearing.

Re: A career ending mistake

#329

Post by chrisweekly »

lytefm wrote: post #285
chrisweekly wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice is keep pursuing whatever energizes you, and aim towards being "T-shaped", not "jack of all trades, master of none", rather "jack of many trades, master of 2 maybe 3".

I'd rather call it pi-shaped or N-shaped then ;)

Yeah, pi-shaped is a definite improvement -- at least when written. When spoken, it might be heard as "pie-shaped", which would be confusing ;)
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