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What would a recession mean for developers?

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Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#91

Post by hamandcheese »

windows2020 wrote: post #86
advael wrote: post #8

The weird part of this advice to me is all the "CS fundamentals" biz. It's admittedly been quite a while since I've felt the need to go out for "junior" roles, but I have a lot of close friends who are recent boot camp grads, and it seems to me that most success in an interview boils down to interpersonal skills and confidence in problem-solving. There's a significant backlash at least in the startup space to "whiteb…

> try stuff you don't already know how to do I've seen this used as justification for implementation of shiny third-party things that were both a fundamentally unfit solution and permitted those pushing it to avoid understanding the root cause of their current problems.

There’s a fine line, but I don’t think that is what GP is talking about. Chasing the new shiny unnecessarily vs learning a new tool when required/necessary. Plenty of people do the former, and plenty of people also resist the latter (vehemently so, in many cases).

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#92

Post by skrtskrt »

windows2020 wrote: post #86
advael wrote: post #8

The weird part of this advice to me is all the "CS fundamentals" biz. It's admittedly been quite a while since I've felt the need to go out for "junior" roles, but I have a lot of close friends who are recent boot camp grads, and it seems to me that most success in an interview boils down to interpersonal skills and confidence in problem-solving. There's a significant backlash at least in the startup space to "whiteb…

> try stuff you don't already know how to do I've seen this used as justification for implementation of shiny third-party things that were both a fundamentally unfit solution and permitted those pushing it to avoid understanding the root cause of their current problems.

I see this more of the quality where you can dive into something you don’t already know how to do with confidence that you can come out the other side.

A lot of people are just really scared of what they don’t know, and don’t even give themselves a chance to self-teach or expand their skills

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#93

Post by DeathArrow »

BigJono wrote: post #15
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't really paid attention to that market for quite a while, but when I was actively looking for a job as a junior dev in SF in 2012, I remember being absolutely maddened by patio11's repeated comments the roaring demand for devs. "Anyone who can fizzbuzz" was the phrase I remember him using. At that time I was junior, but I'd made and published 3 flash games, hacked on the UI of my WP blog quite a bit and made…

I lucked into my first job with a startup and never had to go through the job hunt as a junior candidate (other than through a few big company mass grad hire processes which were an absolute fucking joke, and thank god I didn't actually pass any of them), but this mirrors my experience with hiring juniors. Every time I've done it I've been inundated with candidates. You pretty much have the pick of the litter. Person…

>The problem is it's just not possible to train juniors the right way fast enough. I'm confident I can train almost anyone with basic programming aptitude to be a 95th percentile front-end dev, but it'll take a year or two, and my already average productivity will tank during it.

Nobody taught me anything, apart my teachers at University. Nobody hand holded me. I was able to learn and grow by myself, by reading, applying, trying to find solutions, applying those solutions. Which I continue to this day.

Why should be juniors hand holded? You show them the application, you explain it to them, you give them time to look into it, you reply to their questions about the application and you give them tasks. If they are any good, they should be capable to learn without hand holding.

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#94

Post by DeathArrow »

vinyl7 wrote: post #90
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #2

The market being harder for juniors seems correct from what I’m seeing. I’ve been looking frequently for the last month to see what’s out there, and virtually no one I’ve noticed is seeking junior developers.

I've been searching for my first junior/entry level position for 4 months now. There's very few junior/entry positions, and the ones that are posted are asking for 2-3 years experience, and a Bachelors/Masters/PHD... for web development . The market is either asking for senior developers at senior pay, or mid-senior level developers at entry level pay. I'm not the kind of person who would job hop every 2 years like w…

What kind of studies do you have?

Do you know the basics of like CS, algorithms, data structures?

Do you know a programming language at a decent level?

For the field you are trying to get in, do you know some common used frameworks, libraries and tools?

If the answer is yes to all, you shouldn't have trouble to find a job. If one of the answers is a no, then you have to solve that problem.

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#95

Post by MandieD »

Having graduated into the shadow of the 2000-ish dotcom bust, it means being happy about that boring government contracting job in the DC ‘burbs with a starting salary that was about 60% what your friends who graduated two years earlier got at much cooler companies in more happening places, because you also saw their cool companies fold and them struggle to make their fancy car payments and you’re staring down the barrel of $40k in student loans (an astronomical sum 20 years ago).

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#96

Post by dghlsakjg »

vinyl7 wrote: post #90
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #2

The market being harder for juniors seems correct from what I’m seeing. I’ve been looking frequently for the last month to see what’s out there, and virtually no one I’ve noticed is seeking junior developers.

I've been searching for my first junior/entry level position for 4 months now. There's very few junior/entry positions, and the ones that are posted are asking for 2-3 years experience, and a Bachelors/Masters/PHD... for web development . The market is either asking for senior developers at senior pay, or mid-senior level developers at entry level pay. I'm not the kind of person who would job hop every 2 years like w…

If no one’s told you yet: the experience list on a job listing are a wish list, not a requirement list.

Frequently it is a wildly unrealistic wish list. I have NEVER seen all of those requirements fulfilled.

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#97

Post by DeathArrow »

devwastaken wrote: post #23
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #2

The market being harder for juniors seems correct from what I’m seeing. I’ve been looking frequently for the last month to see what’s out there, and virtually no one I’ve noticed is seeking junior developers.

As Ive said for over a year now - CS grads cant get hired. Companies are not knocking on their door. Unis have to go out of their way to get companies to even associate. What you hear of big hiring is select schools in select places. Corps want experienced devs, they do not want to create experienced devs. They get away with this because there's no standards like any other field of engineering. We don't band together…

>There isn't anything learned in a 4 year degree that you couldn't get with a healthy appetite for YouTube. But they're just adult daycares for parents that think the system will work for their kids.

Would you rather go to a surgery with a doctor who "learned" by watching YouTube or with one spent his time in University and residency?

The state of political activism eating from the inside and destroying the higher learning in US is pretty sad. But the reaction to that shouldn't stopping learning but kicking political activism out from schools.

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#98

Post by DeathArrow »

pharmakom wrote: post #74
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think my degrees are worthless either, as at the very least they exposed me to certain types of content. However, my experiences (non-SV) have been that even if these degrees show one can pick up difficult things fast, hiring managers basically wave it off. They are looking for individuals who can effectively step into most of their (absurdly bloated) tech stack by tomorrow. Maybe it's another story in SV/US,…

This is a huge market inefficiency being exploited by firms like Jane Street.

Can you you develop this a bit farther? How is it being exploited?

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#99

Post by hamdouni »

dougmwne wrote: post #52

What if, and bear with me here for a minute, the software fields are going to fare the best out of everyone? The value of tech investment is no longer in question like it was in 2000. The world's largest companies are tech companies, and it's now accepted wisdom that software is not a cost, but a rocket ship and the rocket ships have just become reusable (due to the magic of software I might add). Maybe it's everyone…

What if IA replace coder or no-code makes coder useless ? Maybe the same heartless MBA would reduce programmer staff ?

Re: What would a recession mean for developers?

#100

Post by vinyl7 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #94
vinyl7 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been searching for my first junior/entry level position for 4 months now. There's very few junior/entry positions, and the ones that are posted are asking for 2-3 years experience, and a Bachelors/Masters/PHD... for web development . The market is either asking for senior developers at senior pay, or mid-senior level developers at entry level pay. I'm not the kind of person who would job hop every 2 years like w…

What kind of studies do you have? Do you know the basics of like CS, algorithms, data structures? Do you know a programming language at a decent level? For the field you are trying to get in, do you know some common used frameworks, libraries and tools? If the answer is yes to all, you shouldn't have trouble to find a job. If one of the answers is a no, then you have to solve that problem.

I'm mostly self taught. Been programming as a hobby for 10+ years, mostly focused on learning game development but have also done web development. I have "shipped" two Ludum Dare games done in C++, and I have a web app I recently developed with React/PHP/MySQL for an organization that is deployed.

The only credential I have is a Full Stack Web development cert from a bootcamp at a big name university. The DSA stuff I self-taught because it's pretty essential to game dev, and the bootcamp taught me the MERN stack.

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