Contrary opinion: If feels very very very wrong to compare a search during April 2020 and now. Why? The year after April 2020 was a booming job market for SWEs. Hiring managers were competing for talent, 2021 was a boom year of low interest rates, euphoria in private and public markets. This blog post _should not_ be considered a response to the WSJ article. And sorry, grinding away at leetcode should only take about…
Ok looked the guy up: https://www.stevenbuccini.com/about/ - Studied at Berkeley - worked at Apple and Uber And I’m supposed to feel bad for you not wanting to spend a few weeks grinding at leetcode? This reeks of someone who is very well off, and not an “Everyman” engineer.
Author also mentions that he didn't have any savings at the time he got laid off. So maybe not the normal person that's worked at Apple for 10 years and cashing out RSUs but someone who did short stints at each.
Loyalty, like love, can be blind. One of the best SREs I work with, is just a stellar performer. Over delivers, solves complex problems quickly and with well thought out and reliable solutions. We needed another SRE, so we hired his best friend. Terrible employee, both in what they deliver and how they act. Night and day difference from the first SRE.
> We needed another SRE, so we hired his best friend. Well there was your mistake. You should have hired the best SRE he knows, not his best friend. I’m good friends with many software engineers, but the strength of our friendship has no correlation with their engineering capabilities.
I think the point is that they were brought on on the strength of the first person's recommendation, not because they were the best friend.
Or its "if you enjoy what you do you will never work" attidude I have met soo many sysadmins and devs that absolutely hate computers, hate programming, hate everything about IT. They were in some career fair at some point in high school and simply picked that because it had high pay with out the 6 or 8 years being a Doctor or lawyer took, and it seemed easier than Electrical Engineering or something. Me, I have alway…
Two other factors to consider: 1) people grow and change and 2) working a job is very different than doing "the same" activity as a hobby. I enjoy gardening and cooking as hobbies, but I don't want to work a job as a landscaper or line chef. After 20+ years of coding, I absolutely hate it despite having started out loving it, but I recognize that my cushy job is less hours for more pay than I could get doing anything…
> working a job is very different than doing "the same" activity as a hobby.
This is very true. I've been fortunate enough to be able to take a break from working. For a while after quitting my 9-5, I didn't want to touch code at all (hooray burnout). But after a while I started working on my own projects, and have gotten involved in open source again. I'm not doing 40 hours of OSS work per week, but it's much more than I'd be able to do with a full time job.
It's very different to get to work on whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want. "Working" like this feels completely different from working for an employer, even an employer that gives a large amount of autonomy.
Loyalty, like love, can be blind. One of the best SREs I work with, is just a stellar performer. Over delivers, solves complex problems quickly and with well thought out and reliable solutions. We needed another SRE, so we hired his best friend. Terrible employee, both in what they deliver and how they act. Night and day difference from the first SRE.
> We needed another SRE, so we hired his best friend. Well there was your mistake. You should have hired the best SRE he knows, not his best friend. I’m good friends with many software engineers, but the strength of our friendship has no correlation with their engineering capabilities.
Obviously I left out that the bad apple came from his recommendation. That's where trusting the judgement of a great employee can have blind spots.
Hey everyone, author here. Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I decided to spend Christmas break in CDMX[0] by myself in order to reflect not only on the past year, but just how far I've come since I got laid off. This is the result. Thanks for making all those hours at the café (instead of at a museum or bar or whatever) worthwhile. [0] I'll be here for a few more days if you'd like to meet up!
Yeah I'm also curious. When I was at Google there were a list of things you were never supposed to ask a candidate because that's Super Illegal(TM) and could expose the company to lawsuits. That included sexual orientation and marriage status. That was more than ten years ago, I'd expect most IT companies would do the same by now, at least in the US.
I've never been asked this sort of question at a large company. Mostly "startups" (scare quotes because they're not Silicon Valley startups; think Orlando or Chicago instead). They also tend to ask a lot about things that might sound innocuous, like hobbies. If I was being stupidly honest, I could talk about my involvement in the furry community. Most furries (~80%) are LGBTQ (versus ~3% to 5% of the base population)…
The annoying part is that you are essentially cornered, being either LGBTQ and/or furry is a large part of your identity and it is hard to have to divorce yourself from that for the purpose of getting hired. Companies really need to get over this desire to know more about the private lives of their employees during the run-up to being hired than they are willing to disclose about their own affairs (such as: financial health of the company, maturity of leadership, attitude to quality of life issues, health care and so on).
I was laid off in February 2020 and it took me almost a year.
I didn't feel like I needed to keep that I was laid off a secret; but I disagree about doing the 8-hour take-homes. They indicate unreasonable bosses and I always walked away. When I was more naive and did those kinds of things, I would often get no callback, not even a "thanks but no thanks."
The number one thing I've learned from being laid off was never to trust your employer. Trust people, if they've shown to be trustworthy, but never, ever trust a company. A company is not family, they're not your friend, and the perceived loyalty you think you've "earned" doesn't mean a thing if layoffs are coming. Treat your employment as a business arrangement. You get a paycheck in exchange for labor. Nothing less…
Ahh yes. I think most people end up going through this bitter disillusionment at some point in their careers. Humans are tribal by nature and companies are setup like a big tribe. We even call the guy (and it’s mostly a guy) at the top the chief! Feelings of “family” and “loyalty” are built into humans operating in tribes, and a real tribe looks out for its members. So when the sudden wholesale internally orchestrate…
the weird part for me is why I keep falling into that trap again and again. I like the work, I like the employer and I do good work and so I think that there is some kind of safety in that. I guess maybe it's a natural human impulse to think that you're somehow settling into a tribe. But the reality is that you're not in a tribe, you don't have safety and the business has a very calculated view of your value: You already got paid for your time, years mean nothing. There is no sense of "past achievements" (which could be construed as loyalty). There is only: Can you keep working right now for price X, yes or no? If no you go.
I keep forgetting that everytime I settle into a job. Perhaps because I do too much compared to others, that somebody must surely see my massive value. But eh, your extra 20-50% is nothing in the grand scheme of a company, they won't mind paying 1.5 people to replace you. They just take it and say "thx buddy". I'm always far happier in the beginning of a job than at the end, I am starting to think that it's because I don't have any delusions that I have safety or loyalty from the people around me.
I think SWE is a very young field. Just 50 years ago GOTO was commonplace (apparently?). In any case I think the future hold some interesting prospects, with copilot and gpt and all.
GOTO is still perfectly acceptable and common practice in the Linux kernel and other widely used codebases. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.0/process/coding-style.ht...
If anyone is curious, it's not just used to make unreadable spaghetti code. There are certain common paradigms, eg.
int do_stuff_in_order(void) {
int ret = init_a();
if (ret != success) goto out;
ret = init_b();
if (ret != success) goto error1;
ret = init_c();
if (ret != success) goto error2;
return 0;
error2:
teardown_b();
error1:
teardown_a();
out:
return ret;
}
I have a bit to go before I’m a software engineer over fifty, but I have a lot of anxiety about it primarily from an ageism standpoint. I don’t really want to go into management because I love coding and solving problems, but I fear that one day I’ll will struggle to find work due to my age. What has your experience been with this issue?
I myself lead a software development team. I am 31 and the last two people I hired were almost 50 and they are very good devs. In my opinion age alone isnt a reason not to hire someone. What is the "common reason" older people are not considered to be hired? I guess because people think they cant adapt or are stuck in some ways in theire thinking. If your future you can show that this is not the case, I guess you are…
> Only "REAL" age related reason is (and I have to admit that I myself didnt hire someone because of that) if the person wants to retire in the near future and you think you want to invest your time in someone who will, hopefully, stay longer.
If you're in the US, you might want to ask your HR about whether that can be a factor in hiring criteria.
If HR says "Don't do that", then they might prefer not to hear that it was already done (so maybe don't volunteer the info, unless they ask), in which case it's a for-future-reference.